Latest news with #PlanningPermission
Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Times
Dale Vince blames ‘shadowy lawyers working for Israel' for flag row
Dale Vince, the green energy tycoon, has refused to apply for planning permission to fly an enormous Palestinian flag from his business headquarters, claiming he is fighting a tactic used by a 'shadowy group of lawyers' acting for Israel. Vince, who has donated more than £5 million to the Labour Party, has been told by Stroud district council that flying the flag of a state not recognised by the UK counts as an advertisement under town and country planning law and requires permission. He has refused to remove the flag from the building, which dominates the main route into Stroud, Gloucestershire, and says planning law states 'any country's national flag' can be flown without permission. He argues that because Palestine is recognised as a sovereign nation by 147 of the 193 UN member states, the flag falls within the meaning of a 'country flag'.
Times
30-07-2025
- Politics
- Times
How lawbreaking councils are killing Britain's self-build dream
Do you dream of building your own home? Ten years ago, the law changed to be on your side. It was supposed to 'make it much easier' to find land with planning permission. But a decade on, research shows more than half of councils are breaking that law. Successive British governments have promised to make it more mainstream to commission your own house. This is how around 60 per cent of homes are built in Germany and France — compared with only 5 per cent of homes in England. The Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 was meant to turn the tide. It gave anyone who wants to commission their own house in England the legal right to sign a register kept by their local council. Within three years, each council must grant planning permission for enough plots to meet this self-build demand. • Read more expert advice on property, interiors and home improvement Ten years after this became law, The Times analysed the latest housing ministry data to track progress. About 57 per cent of local councils in England failed to meet their legal duty to permit enough self-build plots. This includes 126 councils — 40 per cent of local authorities — that missed their self-build requirement by at least half. 'They are failing to meet their legal obligations. We can shout about it but it's up to the central government to rap them over the knuckles,' says Peter Johns, chief executive of the National Custom & Self Build Association (NaCSBA). Twenty-three councils have recorded no self-build permissions whatsoever in the decade since the law took effect. Almost 65,000 individuals and groups are now on self-build registers across England. However, the annual number of self-build plot permissions has halved since its 2019 high of over 10,000, down to 5,182 in the year to October 2023. 'We are not surprised,' Johns says, 'because so many of the councils have tried to bury [self-build registers]. Some have embraced it, some of them have taken it to their heart and are delivering. But all too many are not.' Amy and Derek Hopkins, with their daughters Lily, 8, and Poppy, 6, experienced this first-hand. The family fought a six-year planning battle to build their own home near Winchester, Hampshire, on land they bought in 2016. 'Building our own home had always been a dream. Many of Derek and I's 'date days' were spent visiting home-building exhibitions. So when we saw this land, it felt like a perfect opportunity,' says Amy, 39. Earlier this year, they won an appeal for three self-build plots. The Hopkins will build their own home on one of the plots, with an annexe for Amy's mother, and fund it by selling the two neighbouring plots with consent 'to other like-minded self-builders who want to create their own dream homes', she says. 'It's probably my favourite permission I've ever achieved,' says Andy Moger, of Tetlow King planning consultancy, which won the appeal for them. 'We had things like anonymous letters telling people how to object. We had hedgerows around the site, which hadn't been cut for years. You could hardly see the site. The week before the appeal hearing, they were all cut back.' • I built my own home by the seaside at the age of 87 Amy adds: 'What's ironic is that our only immediate neighbour, the only person who might actually be affected, had no objection whatsoever … The local objections really took a toll, especially because when we suggested meeting everyone at the local pub so they could ask us anything directly, no one came. They were making all these claims about us without ever having spoken to us once.' The Hopkins were among almost 400 families who had joined Winchester city council's self-build register by 2021. In March, an appeal ruling found the council had a 'substantial' shortfall of self-build permissions, which justified allowing the three new self-build homes even though they were just outside the village boundary. Increasingly, refusals for self-builds are overturned by planning appeals where councils have not allowed enough such homes — even in cases where other factors would normally 'kill a scheme', Moger says. Last year, about 46 self-build appeals were decided every month, up from 28 per month in 2019, an NaCSBA report found. But it is not a panacea. 'Appeals on large sites are more likely to win than for individual plots — by a lot. You are around five times more likely to win on a large site appeal … The small guy is being failed by the system, and government legislation and rules are failing to deliver the cut-through that is required,' the report says. Amy Hopkins adds: 'The current planning system needs a complete overhaul. Local councils often lack the knowledge and understanding of self and custom-build that is needed to make fair, well-informed decisions. In our case, figures around self-build were not accurately represented, and despite repeated efforts, no one was willing to investigate or correct them. Families like ours end up paying far more, financially and emotionally, and lose years of progress.' If you are applying for a self-build home, check whether your council is in breach of its self-build duty. Ask your council, under freedom of information law, for the number of entries on its self-build register and the number of such permissions granted for every year since 2016. Check these figures against housing ministry data on self-build registers. • We're building our own home for £320,000 — now it's worth twice that You should also submit a legal agreement with your planning application that binds you to live in the house. 'You need a solicitor to draw a very simple unilateral undertaking for you. It's really important that there is such a mechanism in place to secure it, otherwise it won't count as self-build,' Moger says. More than a third of local authorities have put obstacles in place that make it harder to join their self-build register. Housing ministry data shows 38 per cent of councils require that you meet a local connection test, while 21 per cent will charge you a fee to sign up. Twelve per cent have a financial test in which you must prove you have enough money to build. There is hope, though, as one in six councils (17 per cent) have adopted policies that require a percentage of self-build plots on large developments. This ensures more variety and choice in new homes. That is why a scheme of 121 homes by Barratt, Britain's biggest housebuilder, in the village of Charfield, on the edge of the Cotswolds, included six self-build plots. South Gloucestershire council requires that developers set aside at least 5 per cent of large sites for self-build. Sold for between £125,000 and £140,000, most of the plots went to young couples building their first homes. It 'debunk[ed] what we refer to as the Grand Designs problem, where people think that self-build is all about rich people who go way over budget', Johns says. Nationally, NaCSBA estimates there is now a pipeline of 40,000 plots for self-builders and those who commission a 'custom-build' home. However, there is no guarantee that all these plots will get built out by the people who will live in the homes. Most are on sites controlled by large developers, which may use them to build mainstream market homes instead. No financial support for self-builders is on the cards under the Labour government. The previous Conservative government launched a £150 million Help to Build scheme in 2022, modelled on the now abandoned Help to Buy loans that funded almost 400,000 new homes built by developers. Help to Build promised interest-free loans of up to 40 per cent to build your own home. Robert Jenrick, then the housing minister, said at the time that it would 'help the thousands of people who'd like to build their own home'. It did not pay out for a single house and is now withdrawn with no prospects for a replacement. Specialist self-build mortgages are available at interest rates from 5.5 per cent, for up to 95 per cent of the land and build cost — provided a plot has at least outline planning permission. • Barratt to build Passivhaus homes for the masses However, build costs have soared about 30 per cent since the pandemic, reckons Raymond Connor, chief executive of BuildStore, a self-build mortgage broker. The pace of increase has 'slowed down quite considerably', but costs remain much higher than pre-Covid. 'We're looking at from £2,000 to £2,200 a square metre of build cost, and that's not for high-end. That's a nice, reasonable build. A lot of people will voluntarily go higher than that,' Connor says. To make building your own home genuinely easier, NaCSBA has urged the government to give the self-build law more teeth, ensure self-build plots on large sites are built out as planned and gear the planning system to ensure the likely answer for small sites is 'yes'. 'If they can do this, we will all benefit,' its report says.
