In Conversation With… Richborough: The planning ‘casino’ and grey-belt game-changer

Among them, Richborough is aiming to submit applications for at least 12,000 homes in 2025, up from 7,300 in 2024, which itself was a record year of investment and growth. But government figures show that planning approvals for homes in England fell to a record low in Labour’s first year in office.

It’s a problem that the land promotion sector is grappling with daily: research by planning consultancy Lichfields, commissioned by Richborough and the Land Planning and Development Federation, shows that the average time to determine a major residential outline application by a local planning authority reached 783 days in 2024, rising by 175% since 2014. Just 4% of applications were determined within the statutory 13-week timeframe.

Richborough chief executive Paul Campbell hopes the data will embolden government to do more. He spoke to Property Week about why the planning system can feel like a casino, what reforms are needed and why the concept of the grey belt is a game-changer.

Fewer than 29,000 projects were granted permission by councils in the year to June. Is the government doing enough to reform planning?

This government started well – it adopted the NPPF [National Planning Policy Framework] in December 2024 and there are a whole series of reform consultations going on. But this year it has not moved at the pace needed.

The Lichfields report should embolden government to go as far as it needs to address the fact it’s taking nearly three times as long to determine planning applications now than it did in 2014. It must rationalise what is required in a planning application for a major outline permission and cut back on some of the mission creep that’s happened in the past 10 to 15 years.

It’s critical that the government introduces demand-side support so that “build, build, build” can be achieved through “buy, buy, buy”

The system gives you so much uncertainty that it feels like you’re going to a casino when you’re trying to get a permission. Everyone suffers, but those that suffer most are probably the SME housebuilders and new entrants, which are crucial to getting the delivery figures up.

Given that approvals have reached a decade low, will the reforms suggested in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill help streamline the process?

There are some good things in the bill. It talks about more delegated authority for officers, so that fewer things go to final committee. Most applications fall outside local plans because those plans are not up to date. Under the bill, if they meet certain criteria, they would be dealt with by officers. That would free up committee time to deal with more applications, and it would mean you have less unpredictable outcomes where members are refusing applications that are in line with policy.

We do have these absurd situations where sites that are allocated in a local plan still get refused. But these are gains that will be felt over a longer period. The direction of travel is positive, but it’s not giving you the planning permissions that are needed today.

In October, the government tabled last-minute changes to the bill and while some changes are sensible, such as KC Lord Banner’s proposed amendment to stop the clock of a permission while it is subject to judicial or statutory review, they fall short of providing an urgent fix.

The government must be bold in introducing statutory NDMPs [national development management policies] that could make planning decisions speedier and more predictable. It’s also critical that the government introduces demand-side support so that “build, build, build” can be achieved through “buy, buy, buy”.

How important are the new housing targets if England is to come close to delivering 1.5 million new homes by 2029?

The single biggest thing the government has done is hand down mandatory housing targets to local authorities. For too long, we had housing numbers that were vague or not mandatory. So this is the most important thing now framing the planning strategies for most of our sites. These are bold targets to reach the 1.5-million goal.

However, there are transitional arrangements. Local authorities that were already progressing their local plans are able to game the system by quickly accelerating the adoption of those plans on a lower housing number that can then endure for five years. So the target numbers needed to reach 1.5 million won’t come into effect for beyond five years because it’s a phased introduction depending on where you were with your local plan. Those transition arrangements should have been bolder.

Local authorities without an up-to-date local plan in place should have been given a shorter protection period so that they could get straight on with planning for that higher number.

The government swiftly introduced the ‘grey-belt’ concept to release low-quality green-belt land for new homes, if key criteria are met. Can this really help to boost housing supply?

It really is a game-changer. Green belt was intended to stop urban sprawl and keep highly populated towns and cities separate. But we ended up in a situation where new housing was being provided beyond the green belt and creating unsustainable travel patterns or simply not being delivered at all.

There are perfectly good sites across the green belt – scruffy sites and boring fields rather than beautiful rolling countryside – that happen to be well connected to where people live, work and travel. Grey belt is a rebrand that allows you to have a conversation about the purpose and role of green belt without it being so sensational. It allows you to get permissions in areas where houses are needed the most and that are often the most sustainable locations.

We’ve already secured a resolution to grant outline permission for up to 110 family homes in Solihull under the grey-belt rules and we’ve got numerous applications in and proposed to go into the system. The funny thing is quite a few of them were sites that once had a draft allocation in a local plan but the plan never progressed as it was deemed too controversial by councillors.

You’re now working with the Greater London Authority (GLA) for the first time. What changed to make this viable? How is grey belt helping?

There’s nowhere in the country that has a housing crisis as serious as in the GLA area. At the same time, London’s reliance on high-density, high-rise apartment schemes has been disrupted by the Building Safety Act. Supply has trickled to a halt. Yet there is significant green belt on the edges of London, close to transport hubs, that could deliver the homes London needs. These sites are viable; they could provide family homes, they could provide affordable housing and they could deliver quickly.

We are now progressing sites within the GLA boundary for the first time in our history. We are securing sites we believe are suitable and we’re in pre-application discussions with various London boroughs and the GLA about bringing forward planning applications on those sites. This has been made possible by the government introducing the grey-belt concept and by being pro-housing. Having a London mayor who is aligned with this and who has a duty to deliver homes for Londoners is also very helpful.

Within the GLA area, we’re preparing planning applications for schemes in Bromley [120 homes], Havering [570] and Hillingdon [450], all of which are expected to be classified as grey belt. And within London’s inner commuter belt, we submitted a planning application last December for 600 homes on a 99-acre site in Croxley Green near Rickmansworth.