The boss of Bromwich Hardy, one of the Midlands’ leading commercial property agencies, has demanded that the government makes urgent changes to unblock the UK’s development approval system.
Tom Bromwich, managing partner at Bromwich Hardy, which commands nearly 60% of the marketplace in Coventry and Warwickshire, said that both planning and conveyancing systems were “broken”.
Backing calls from the British Property Federation (BPF), the voice of the real estate industry, he explained that chancellor Rachel Reeves must act now to streamline processes if she wants to achieve her core target of growing the UK economy.
Mr Bromwich said: “One of the biggest issues facing the economy is the length of time and onerous processes it takes to complete a transaction from when a property deal has been agreed.
“This is a direct result of both the planning and conveyancing systems being broken here in the UK.
“We have been arguing for a long time that it is simply unacceptable for transactions to be bogged down by such failures.
“With that in mind, we fully back the BPF’s detailed calls for the chancellor to invest in the appropriate resource which will allow planning departments to make strategic long-term decisions.”
The BPF has this week demanded that the government hire more than the 300 planners it promised in the run-up to the election in July last year.
It also said that planning departments must be allowed to fully recover development control costs, ring-fencing income to protect the service.
Making recommendations in its Comprehensive Spending Review representation, the BPF said the chancellor must remove the “significant barriers and bottlenecks” that are holding back investment and “preventing the property sector from delivering its full potential”.
The BPF says delays at the Land Registry of between 18 to 24 months are disrupting investment decisions, calculating that legal teams waste 12,000 working days every year chasing applications.
Mr Bromwich added: “The BPF’s detailed demands are spot on, and we agree that it’s now time for the government to put its money where its mouth is with the proper resource needed to bring these backlogs down without delay.
“Put simply, the government’s earnest hopes for economic growth won’t be realised unless the regulatory and planning system is properly resourced and made more efficient.
“Without that, the government’s much-vaunted aspirations to deliver the commercial properties and modern infrastructure, as well as new homes, will come to nothing, and growth will remain stagnant.
“Here in the Midlands, we believe that hundreds of millions of pounds in investment are needed to create more employment spaces both in the office and industrial sectors.
“But for these investments to be unlocked, the government now needs to urgently work on creating a modern fiscal and regulatory environment that gives the commercial property and other sectors real confidence.”