Planning partnership
Working with Local Authorities to deliver Custom and Self Build homes
Local Authorities - why work with us?
The nascent Custom and Self Build housing sector is playing an ever more important role in the UK residential market. The National Custom and Self Build Association (NaCSBA) estimates that there are currently roundly 55,000 people signed up to Self Build registers. Notwithstanding this already significant demand, we believe that for the present it is still a largely untapped and embryonic area within the housing market.
Our principal objective is to bring forward development sites for planning approval that will help to satisfy this demand and which are commercially viable and both technically and legally compliant with current guidelines. We intend to focus on those areas where we believe there is already a strong demand for this type of housing and which will in turn make a valuable contribution to the diversity and targeted growth of the housing supply.
Supported by our team of expert consultants we will provide a roadmap that will explain every stage in the seamless transition from site acquisition through to house completion. This will provide local authorities with the comfort that when granting planning consent, delivery of high quality homes and infrastructure will be assured.
We will provide comprehensive guidelines that will explain every aspect of the process and clarify precisely how the development will be organised inclusive of its shared infrastructure and public realm facilities. Planning authorities will also be provided with the broad design templates of the future homes, based on which customisation will ultimately give expression to the individual self builders’ personal requirements.
Why should you grant planning consent for custom and self build?
Local authorities are obliged to hold and maintain a register of interested custom and self-build applicants and to ensure that the consented supply of plots meets this demand.
There is no reason however why the Custom and Self Build market should be restricted to this modest policy aspiration. Custom and Self builders are fundamentally no different to purchasers of other forms of new housing. They simply need local authority support to secure plots and gain planning permission before they can proceed.
Custom build and Self build, if properly conceived and delivered, provides another valuable route to delivering the much needed homes that the country needs. A great may purchasers wish that they had more freedom to specify the type of home that ideally matches their needs before making possibly the largest single investment they will ever make. Currently, their freedom of expression is largely limited to a selection of finishing choices from a range of pre-selected products.
Whilst there is a place for large-scale, mass produced homes, there is an increasing appreciation and growing demand for Custom and Self build housing to sit alongside the conventional, mainstream housing supply.
Custom build and Self build will, by its nature, deliver a higher quality of design and sustainability than the volume housing sector, where the emphasis is to standardise for efficiency rather than to customise and personalise for the individual.
It is our aim to broaden the availability and choice of custom and self build opportunities within our geographic area of operations to enable more people to have ready access to development plots on which they can then build the home of their dreams.