Prop Views

The NPPF has just had its biggest rewrite in over a decade, gray belt is formalised, and housebuilder shares are swinging wildly from Crest Nicholson's third profit warning to Persimmon defying the slowdown. Nick Cuff and Oli Lowrie are joined by Phil Barnes, former National Land Director at Barratt and now strategic adviser at Savills, to unpack what the new planning framework really means for housebuilders, why gray belt could unlock the biggest change to land supply in fifty years, and whether the sector's beaten up share prices are actually a buying opportunity. They also dig into the SME cascade mechanism U-turn, the case for Help to Buy's return, and Reform UK's provocative new planning white paper that could scrap the London Plan altogether.


KEY TAKEAWAYS

The revised NPPF, published on 17 August, is the first comprehensive rewrite since 2012 and reinstates a strong presumption in favour of sustainable development.

Gray belt formally opens up unallocated greenfield and greenbelt land on the edge of cities for housing where a five year land supply cannot be demonstrated, provided it does not cause urban sprawl, merge settlements or harm historic towns.

Three new viability exemptions have been added to the 15% above policy affordable housing threshold, covering brownfield sites, schemes of over 1,500 homes, and development that differs from the local plan allocation.

London has grown its urban footprint by only 5% since 2000 versus Paris's 55%, despite similar population growth, a gap Phil argues shows UK cities have been artificially constrained for decades.

The promised cascade mechanism flexibility for medium sized SME sites of 10 to 49 homes did not make it into the final document, which Phil calls a genuine U-turn that will keep hurting smaller developers who cannot find a delivery partner.

Housebuilder shares told three different stories in the same week: Crest Nicholson issued its third profit warning since April, Vistry bounced on a £350 million government grant tied to its strategic partner status, and Persimmon kept defying the slowdown with completions up 13%.

Phil makes the case for the sector being undervalued, pointing to a roughly 30% gap between net asset value and share price, land moving from a depreciating to a potentially appreciating asset, and the possibility of a Help to Buy style scheme returning around the October budget.

Reform UK's new planning white paper proposes scrapping the London Plan, cutting affordable housing to 5% in the five biggest cities, and a decade long stamp duty exemption on new build homes, though Phil questions whether a genuinely permissive system can work without housing targets to force reluctant councils to grant consent.


 BEST MOMENTS

"UK cities have been frozen in aspic for fifty years."

"Why are we artificially constraining the growth of our cities and not allowing people to live where they want to live in the face of huge population growth?"

"It was in the draft and we expected it to be in the finalised version. It is a U-turn, and not a helpful one in my view."

"What you bought for a pound five years ago is probably only worth eighty pence now because of all the regulatory changes. I think we could be moving out of that era."


EPISODES TO CHECK OUT NEXT

Inside the Draft London Plan with Dominic Grace

In this episode of Prop Views, Nick Cuff and Oli Lowrie are joined by Dominic Grace to unpack three of the summer's biggest property stories. They start with Sadiq Khan's draft London Plan, debating whether its shorter length makes it bolder or simply more prescriptive, and dig into the housing targets, density matrix and affordable housing thresholds that will shape the capital for the next twenty years. From there, they turn to Prologis's recommended £14 billion takeover of Segro, the UK's largest REIT, and what it says about the shrinking pool of listed real estate businesses. Finally, they assess Angela Rayner's return to the housing brief, her early decisions on major schemes, and whether she has the appetite for the radical intervention the sector says it needs. A candid, occasionally blunt conversation about what it actually takes to get Britain building.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Sadiq Khan's draft London Plan, published 16 July, is nearly half the length of the 2021 version but Oli Lowrie argues it is more prescriptive, not less, particularly on building heights and density
• The plan targets 558,000 new homes and reintroduces density matrices tied to height, with a baseline of four to nine storeys across most of the city and 100 metre towers permitted in only 17 locations
• Dominic Grace calls the plan a "pathetic effort" for a market in crisis, arguing it needs radical intervention rather than incremental tweaks
• Modelling referenced in the episode suggests only around 23 per cent of scenarios stack up financially once affordable housing requirements are applied, with a potential £28.3 billion funding gap for affordable housing delivery
• Prologis has agreed a recommended £14 billion takeover of Segro, creating a combined business with roughly £269 billion of assets under management and expanding Prologis's European footprint by 47 per cent
• The deal highlights how few listed UK real estate businesses remain, with private equity increasingly stepping in to fill the gap
• Angela Rayner's return as housing secretary gets a mixed scorecard from the hosts, who cover her early decisions including consent for the Truman Brewery redevelopment and rejection of 3,500 homes and a stadium at Ebbsfleet over safety concerns
• The episode ends on a rare positive note, with Building Safety Act gateway approval rates now at 91 per cent, up from around 25 to 30 per cent in the early years

 BEST MOMENTS

• "I'd liken it to a lady who, in polite society, just fainted in an Edwardian parlour, and someone gets out the smelling salts. What we actually need is a defibrillator, wired up to the mains, to shock the system back into delivering housing." — Dominic Grace on the draft London Plan
• "I don't think it is bold. I think it's kind of more prescriptive. This version of government finds writing a plan that's pro development quite hard to be pro developer." — Oli Lowrie
• "It's extraordinary how little we really understand about that world. When something like this happens, it's a bit of a jolt." — Dominic Grace on the Prologis and Segro deal
• "The Building Safety Act approval rate is at 91 per cent. It was 25 or 30 per cent for the first couple of years. That's basically a coin toss. Now it's up at 91 per cent and it's happening faster." — Oli Lowrie