MHCLG sets out plans for building post-coronavirus

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick has announced that new measures to help the construction industry boost building and return to work safely will be introduced this week.

Under the measures, planning permission deadlines will be extended, planning appeals will be sped up and builders will be allowed more flexible working hours following agreement with their local council.

This means that sites with consent that have an expiry date between the start of lockdown and the end of this year will now see their consent extended to 1 April 2021. This will prevent work that has been temporarily disrupted by the pandemic from stopping altogether. It is estimated that by the end of this month alone, more than 400 residential permissions providing more than 24,000 new homes would have expired.

Jenrick said: “Building the homes the country needs is central to the mission of this government and is an important part of our plans to recover from the impact of the coronavirus. New laws will enable us to speed up the pace of planning appeals and save hundreds of construction sites from being cancelled before they have a chance to get spades in the ground, helping to protect hundreds of thousands of jobs and create many others. Taken together, these measures will help to keep workers safe and our economy moving as we work together to bounce back from the pandemic.”