By Vivienne Shirley, Senior Consultant Hammond’s highly-anticipated pre-Brexit budget was slightly underwhelming from a housing and planning perspective. However, he did admit that the Letwin review (published today) confirms that large developers ‘do not engage in systematic land banking’ – something we already knew but nice to have it confirmed …

By Vivienne Shirley, Senior Consultant The Lib Dem conference this autumn may have garnered more media attention for ‘exotic spresm’ than any policies, but this does it a disservice. While the party was still (a whopping eight years later) having to spend time defending tuition fees, there was a cautious optimism …

By Vivienne Shirley, Senior Consultant  The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released dramatically lower household number projections than previously forecast, causing quite a stir in the planning world.  The 2014 projection, calculated by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), stated the number of households would grow by 210,000 a year in England – resulting in 28 million homes …

By Vivienne Shirley, Senior Consultant Knight Frank has released its latest Residential Development Land Index for Q2 2018, showing the biggest annual rise in greenfield land prices in England since 2014. Prices rose by 2.1% on average in Q2 of 2018, taking the annual growth to 4.6% – the strongest seen …

By Vivienne Shirley, Senior Consultant In a busy month for the Secretary of State for Communities, James Brokenshire has announced a new garden communities programme to provide tailored advice and potential grant funding to help get garden village and town projects off the ground. Councils, as well as developers that …

By Vivienne Shirley, Senior Consultant The TCPA has recently published a report exploring the ways councils are trying to boost affordable housing rates in their districts. It comes as social house building hits the lowest proportion of overall housing supply since records began, with only 5,900 homes completed in 2017. …

By Vivienne Shirley, Senior Consultant Places for People, one of the UK’s largest property development and management companies, has been selected by Surrey County Council (SCC) as its partner in a real estate deal expected to last 15 years. The contract award notice, published yesterday, stated: “If the venture were …

By Vivienne Shirley, Senior Consultant A new interim report commissioned by the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) has concluded that Britain’s current planning system is ‘not fit for purpose’ and should be overhauled. The review by Nick Raynsford, president of the TCPA and housing minister from 1997 to 2001, …