#planning-reform

#planning-reform

Ministers have told officials at the Environment Agency to wave through planning applications with minimal resistance, as part of a major regulatory shakeup designed to increase economic growth and plug the government's financial hole. Officials at the agency say they have been told to do as little as legally possible to prevent housing applications from being approved, with the government also drafting in senior advisers from the housing department to speed up the process.

The former environment secretary inherited the housing brief from Angela Rayner in last week's reshuffle, after she resigned over her tax affairs. Reed told the BBC the only way out of what he called a housing "crisis" was to "build baby build" and threatened sanctions on developers who dragged their feet, although he did not specify what that might entail.

Hedgehog highways and bird-safe glass could become requirements for all new buildings as members of the House of Lords push through amendments to the government's planning bill. This may cause a headache for ministers, who have tried to avoid burdening developers with laws on nature measures such as swift bricks. The new Lords amendments include mandated provision for these nesting boxes, which campaigners say are crucial for the survival of the threatened species.

Dozens of organisations have signed an open letter calling on the government to scrap office-to-residential conversions in England, which analysis has found led to the loss of almost 28,000 affordable homes. Local government campaigners, housing providers and homelessness charities have all joined the call to abolish some permitted development rights (PDR), which grant automatic planning permission to building projects and are often used to convert office blocks into housing.

Building new homes takes a long, long time. Often, developments get stuck in the planning system for years and years before they finally start construction, and that means housing isn't getting built fast enough to keep up with demand. But the government has come up with a scheme that it hopes will solve that. Two London neighbourhoods are among six sites in England that have just been added to the government's New Homes Accelerator programme.