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BPF responds to Conservative manifesto

Liz Peace, chief executive of the British Property Federation, said: “It’s good to see that housing and planning have got a good airing, but the worry is that amid all the idealistic thinking around localism may take some more work before it can be implemented. Many of the Tories proposals – around incentives for councils to grant planning permission and changing use-classes to make it simpler for buildings to be re-used – make sense.

“But others, such as allowing third-party right of appeals could cripple the planning system, even if they’re only allowed when applications do not conform with local development plans. For many reasons, this is often the case, and it certainly won’t narrow the flood of appeals likely to come in from rival developers and pressure groups who will be anti-development. In Ireland, appeals doubled over night. It is essential that politicians get a grip on what happens on the ground, rather than just focusing on what sounds good to voters.

“Much of what’s in here has already been scrutinised in the various green papers the Tories have published and typically the big questions for the industry will centre around how we pay for infrastructure and reduce the costs of planning. Talk of a tariff approach sounds like a not-too-distant cousin of what we have inherited with the community infrastructure levy and whatever it eventually gets named, ministers will have to recognise that councils will have to share a lot more of the costs of schemes with developers.”

For more information contact Andrew Teacher at ateacher@bpf.org.uk