Thousands of homes will be built faster on smaller sites across the country as complex planning rules are streamlined, onerous regulatory burdens eased, and financial firepower is provided to SME builders.

The current system makes it far too difficult for smaller builders to get spades in the ground – with a small site of 10 homes jumping through the same planning hurdles as one with 100 or more.

Smaller firms, which provide local jobs and train eight out of 10 construction apprentices, have seen their market share shrink since the 1980s, when SME builders delivered 40% of the country’s homes.

Today’s changes will help turn this around, driving up competition across the sector and helping deliver the Plan for Change milestone of 1.5 million homes, so more working families and young people can achieve the dream of homeownership.

Today’s proposals include:

• Faster decisions for small sites: Minor developments of up to nine homes will benefit from streamlined planning and eased Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) requirements, with faster decisions being taken by expert planning officers, not planning committees;
• A new ‘medium site’ category: Sites between ten to 49 homes will face simpler rules and fewer costs – including a proposed exemption from the Building Safety Levy and simplified BNG rules, making it easier to deliver habitats for wildlife on these sites, delivering a win-win for nature and development;
• More land and financing options for SMEs: Homes England will release more of its land exclusively to SMEs, and a new National Housing Delivery Fund to be confirmed at the spending review will support long-term finance options, such as revolving credit.
• A new pilot to unlock small sites for SMEs: the Small Sites Aggregator pilot in Bristol, Sheffield and the London Borough of Lewisham will unlock sites that would otherwise not have been developed, while attracting private investment to build new social rent homes.

Richard Parker, Labour’s Mayor of the West Midlands said: “In the West Midlands, our local builders play a vital role creating jobs, training the next generation of tradespeople and breathing life into communities.

“These changes are a welcome step towards breaking down the barriers that have held back small housebuilders for too long. Red tape and bureaucracy has stopped people building the homes our region desperately needs - Labour are fixing that."

Full details are being set out today for the modernising of planning committees – ensuring elected councillors focus on the most significant proposals and larger developments rather than small-scale projects or niche technical details, while more faster decisions are made by expert trained planners.

Under these plans, once a development has been agreed in principle technical details won’t keep going back and forth to committees - accelerating housebuilding and saving council planning departments time and money.

Further support announced today for local builders includes:

• £100 million in SME Accelerator Loans to help smaller firms to grow and invest using part of the £700 million extension to the Home Building Fund announced in December.
• £10 million for councils to fund more specialists to speed up environmental assessments, getting spades in the ground faster.
• A £1.2 million PropTech Innovation Fund to support innovation in small site delivery, for example through use of new data tools.

It comes as the government unveiled its plans to train up to 120,000 new apprentices, including within construction – ensuring the industry has what it needs to get building.

The wide-ranging package for SMEs today builds on the government’s planning overhaul so far, with the new National Planning Policy Framework alone expected to drive housebuilding to its highest level in over 40 years and add £6.8 billion to the economy by 2030.