James Wimpenny asks if development is for the faint hearted

My retort is that I’m going to set up in textiles, having no experience and not knowing how on earth to start but I do know a lot of wealthy textile folk.

Yett where is the starting point for the uninitiated? Two decades ago it was a relatively straightforward process. Find a piece of land and negotiate a price.

Ask an architect to prepare a design and submit it to the local authority planning department. After a period of about eight weeks you either got an approval or a refusal. Once achieving an approval you choose three contractors to price the job, pick the one you fancy and get it built.

However, the whole development sector has seen a sea change making the process sometimes seemingly unfathomable. Planning applications are now taking anything up to four years and beyond, most Local Planning Authorities are underfunded and understaffed.

One might form a supposition that it is a whole lot easier for them just to refuse applications to get them off their desk to tick target tick boxes and it may often seem to be a presumption against development rather than presumption in favour.

Add to this the onerous technical requirements, ever slower responses from local authority consultees, Highways, Environmental Health, Heritage, Ecology, Trees, Biodiversity Net Gain demands not to mention political interference and nimbyism, all of which can cause considerable delays in processing planning applications.

In addition to this there is often a slog to agree a Legal Agreement with the council over financial contributions for local infrastructure, open spaces, affordable housing, education provision, public consultations etc.

Rightly so, Building Regulations have been improved to ensure the quality, longevity and environmental credentials and are ever increasing.

Construction has a major challenge over the coming years in the strive to achieve net zero. Gas boilers are to be outlawed and requirements for sustainable sources of energy such as ground and air source heat pumps and solar power, all add expense and complication to the build.

This brings into question, the existing infrastructure. Houses will be heated using electricity and every new house now has to have electric car charging facilities. How will the network cope with new development?

These challenges and obstacles have made moving schemes forward seem like pushing elephants uphill. Agreeing land prices prior to surpassing all the above challenges is increasingly difficult.

Without going through the process it is difficult to achieve a viable price at the start. “They aren’t making any more land” still holds very true but it is not so easy now to put a price on it.

All the above challenges have seen the exponential growth of specialist consultants. It may seem yet another expense for the client but good advice in the early stages is now essential and it is a life saver and time saver on conclusion.

James Wimpenny, Wimpenny Land & Build Consultants and Chair Kirklees Development Consortium. Email [email protected]