Comment:
The Chancellor’s “£6 billion business blitz” may sound impressive, but anyone who has worked inside the planning and construction system knows this is window dressing rather than reform.
Government IT systems have never delivered genuine efficiency in this sector. They tend to work only when collecting money, not when providing public services. Planning and building control are interpretative processes — full of judgement calls and local nuance — so digitising them simply shifts the friction. Architects, engineers and builders end up spending more time uploading, checking and re-formatting data, while councils wrestle with incompatible platforms and under-resourced digital teams.
The Home Builders Federation’s warning this week confirms what most of us are seeing on the ground: viability is collapsing. Zoopla’s data shows that building new homes is financially unviable across almost half the country. Layer upon layer of “well-intentioned” policy — Biodiversity Net Gain, the Residential Property Developer Tax, the Building Safety Levy, the Future Homes Standard — has created a cumulative cost load that many sites can’t absorb. The proposed abolition of the reduced Landfill Tax rate could push some projects over the edge entirely, adding £15,000–£50,000 per unit.
So while Whitehall celebrates theoretical admin savings, the reality is that every reform adds compliance cost at site level. Digital efficiency rhetoric won’t offset the weight of policy-driven inflation, taxation and regulation now throttling delivery. Until government confronts the cumulative cost stack honestly — rather than relabelling bureaucracy as progress — the housing crisis will deepen, not improve.
