The comments come after the Housing Forum called on the government to take politics away from housing decisions and urged for all planning applications with fewer than 250 homes to be determined by planning officers rather than councillors. 

The suggestion came as part of the pan-industry group’s 10-point plan to solve the housing supply crisis and now Development Finance Today has spoken to those within the housebuilding industry to see if they agree with the Housing Forum’s idea.

James Bloom, managing director of development finance at Masthaven, stated that he had been campaigning about the current planning system for a long time.

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“Having council members make planning decisions is far too political. 

“Giving unelected officials delegated power, so they can make planning decisions, could help improve the process – especially if they are given targets to reach within specific timeframes.” 

Rico Wojtulewicz, policy adviser for the House Builders Association, added: “Local authorities already employ unelected planners as experts, yet their expertise is regularly disregarded by inexpert politicians.
 

Are local authorities planning teams well-resourced? 

“Government steps to ‘objectively assess the housing need’ are a good start toward depoliticising planning, but – unless we fix the slow and expensive planning system – no amount of tinkering will result in enough new homes being built.”

Andrew Whitaker, planning director at the Home Builders Federation, said it supported the Housing Forum’s proposals, but said many local authorities already had many delegated powers allowing officers to make planning decisions without the need for councillors.

“However, this raises the issue of local authority resources and whether there are enough professional officers within local authorities to do the work. 

“The proposed increase in fees in July (announced in the white paper) might have helped, but they are ringfenced only for planning departments as a whole, not focused on development management – dealing with planning applications. 

“Other ways to help would be to allow applicants to deal with statutory consultees directly rather than having to use the LPA [Local Planning Authority] as an intermediary or post box.”

Sam Howard, COO at Regentsmead stated that he felt one of the key factors to ensure enough homes were being built in the right places was to guarantee local planning teams were adequately staffed and resourced. 

“This should be a given, but due to government funding constraints I am not particularly confident. 

“Removing party politics is a good idea, but it requires the government to have a clear policy on housebuilding - which I am not convinced it does - especially in relation to building on the green belt. 

“So, whether you remove elected councillors from the planning decisions or not you need a clear central government policy especially on rural planning allied with local councils having extra powers and extra funding.”