ACE Group has responded to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) fifth planning reform working paper which focuses on improving the build-out rates of housing developments. 

The working paper suggests those developers which leave sites incomplete could lose their land to councils or face financial penalties if they fall behind pre-agreed delivery time frames. This is in addition to the requirement to publish annual development progress reports. 

ACE Group, the Association for Consultancy and Engineering, has cautioned against blunt interventions such as penalties without clear justification. Instead, ACE advocates for an integrated and compressive approach to increasing build-out, including stimulating private demand, especially among first-time buyers, and ensuring that local authorities have the skills and resources to provide delivery certainty.  

Ben Brittain, Director of Public Affairs at ACE Group, said: “The health of the first-time buyer market plays a pivotal role in supporting consistent housing delivery. At present, the market is severely constrained by affordability pressures, rising interest rates, and limited mortgage availability, all of which have suppressed buyer demand. As a result, our members are exercising caution in their build-out strategies, particularly in areas where local sales rates are sluggish. The underlying concern is clear: developers, particularly SMEs, will not commit capital to build homes that they cannot reasonably expect to sell at viable prices. 

“As such, stimulating the first-time buyer market must be a priority for MHCLG if the Government is to ensure a steady and diversified pipeline of housing delivery. With Help to Buy now closed, there is currently a policy vacuum in this space. MHCLG should consider new or adapted interventions to support first-time buyers, potentially including equity loan schemes, mortgage guarantee programmes, or targeted stamp duty reliefs.” 

Alex Jahanshahi-Edlin, Associate Director ESG and Net Zero, and ACE member, McBains, added: “We are pleased to see that the government is taking the delivery of new homes seriously and assessing the plausible pathways to increase delivery. However, we would emphasise the representations made by ACE and encourage the government to focus on interventions that stimulate the market first and foremost. 

“As evidenced by the Letwin Review, the banking of developable land is not the primary driver in slowing housing delivery. There are numerous market forces impacting current levels of delivery, including but not limited to: uncertainty around regulatory standards, supply chain limitations, material and labour prices, availability of skills and expertise, and local plan policy and housing land supply uncertainty. Whilst we acknowledge that a system of penalties and fines may be intended to promote SME developers and smaller sites, such measures run the risk of being counterproductive; further stifling much-need, at-scale development.” 

Alongside this, ACE Group is calling for better funding of local authority planning departments including devolved five-year funding settlements as key enablers to the development of strategic local plans and up-to-date five-year housing land supplies.