Aspiring for perfection is not the way to boost housing delivery

Reform’s housing spokesperson was sacked within days of being appointed for comments he made on the Grenfell tragedy including “everyone dies in the end”, which while no doubt true was incredibly insensitive.

It is worth noting that this spokesperson was none other than Simon Dudley, the former senior independent director and sometime chair of Homes England no less, not to mention chair of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation. This guy knew what he was talking about but did so in a way that was so appalling, nobody could argue that it was right for him to go.

That said, he was outlining what we all know to be true: regulation and process have made London in particular a place nobody wants to build in. Rob Perrins of Berkeley Homes made the same case himself, citing the Building Safety Act as an example of how cost and delay kill projects which become unviable in a part of the country where homes are more needed than ever.

This and the two staircase requirements were no doubt driven by a sense of wanting to be seen to act in the wake of the Grenfell final report, but neither touched on the real cause of the tragedy. This is not the place to re-examine that awful fire and the tragic loss of life which resulted, but decisions made in haste have not helped.

If housing secretary Steve Reed wants to get near to the government’s target of 1.5 million homes, he needs to understand that we are massively over regulated, that bureaucracy is killing delivery and that aspiring for perfection is not a practical way of encouraging delivery.

A classic case was the recent Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. This was the new government’s chance to start stripping out unnecessary overregulation. It did reinstate the major elements of the 2008 Planning Act which established NSIPs, something the succeeding Tory administrations disgracefully failed to maintain.

But this is not helping a small independent housebuilder who still faces all the ludicrous regulation around bats, jumping spiders and great crested newts alongside all the other impediments a local authority puts in the way. It has done nothing to bring the delay and cost imposed at every stage in this country just to permit homes to be built, which is what was so badly needed.

The Shoreditch Works application in Hackney is a case in point. This was a site which was an obvious case for redevelopment with the potential for 80,000 sq m of mixed use, including commercial activity and homes based on a plan most locals actually liked. The developers had to provide 7,534 pages covering 450 documents. This was because they had to respond to 42 separate Hackney Council policies, 75 London Plan policies and sundry other compliance requirements that not only took years to comply with but consumed huge amounts of money.

The application was eventually refused, despite its obvious merits. What message should it send Steve Reed? Simple. Less is more. Get seriously deregulating Steve. Otherwise, this is all just talk.