________________________________________________________________________________________________ Main
Interview
And for local communities, this would speed up the delivery of new homes without the major disruption associated with larger-scale new developments.
Do you believe the Planning and Infrastructure Act will speed up delivery, or are bigger barriers still holding projects back? I do believe it will help at the margins, but it will not, on its own, unlock delivery at the scale the government wants.
The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 is clearly aimed at one of the market’ s most visible bottlenecks: slow, uncertain planning. In particular, it looks designed to reduce friction in the decision-making process by pushing more determinations through officers rather than committees, simplifying the route from submission to consent. If that translates into more predictable outcomes and fewer avoidable delays, that is a real improvement. It should also help bring down the professional time and cost that gets burned in the planning stage, which matters for viability.
But planning is only one part of the delivery equation. High interest rates and affordability pressure reduce endbuyer demand, and that feeds straight back into what is financially viable to start on site. Where sales rates are uncertain, developers will naturally pause, redesign, or re-phase schemes.
On the delivery side, labour shortages and weak apprenticeship pipelines are constraining output. Materials costs and supply availability remain challenging in certain packages. Those are buildability constraints, not planning constraints.
And structurally, SME builders remain underrepresented and constrained by access to capital and risk appetite, while larger developers will often control delivery pace to match absorption and protect pricing. So, while the act can reduce delay, it doesn’ t remove the bigger viability and delivery barriers that still dictate whether projects actually start and finish.
How much does inconsistent local authority decision-making delay smaller housing schemes? The consistency of decision making really varies council by council, creating a postcode lottery where two projects of a similar scale can face different timelines depending on the local authority.
For smaller developments that don’ t have the same level of resources as larger developments, this inconsistency can be damaging. Time lost in the planning phase can force knock-on changes to procurement and delivery sequencing.
It can also change behaviour earlier in the process. When decision making feels unpredictable, smaller housebuilders can become discouraged or more selective about what applications they submit. Over time, this shrinks the pipeline of small housing projects.
At a national level, there have been discussions about the government’ s housebuilding target of 1.5 million being downgraded to 1.2 million. Planning consistency is one of the structural blockers that makes scaling supply harder.
Why do SME housebuilders find it harder than larger developers to deal with planning complexity? SME housebuilders find it harder to deal with planning complexity than larger developers because they are hit harder with the system’ s risks, costs and unpredictability more sharply. For large developers, planning friction is often a manageable inefficiency. For SMEs, it can be a make-or-break barrier.
For SMEs, upfront costs are harder to absorb, whereas large developers can spread these costs across a large number of units. ccemagazine. com 13