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July 2023 - Housing

Local councils are failing to address the housing shortages across the UK, survey finds: A nationwide survey has found that 90% of the UK public believes that the planning processes adopted by local councils are failing to address, never mind  improve, the UK housing shortage and the number of affordable houses available.

The nationwide survey was conducted by Searchland, involving 1,039 members of the public. It was completed to highlight where problems lie regarding the affordable housing shortages in the United Kingdom, finding that around three-quarters of people surveyed (76%) believe the processes used by local councils for planning and approval, lack transparency and are hard to understand,and 88% believing that council-level processes lack efficiency and are not completed on time.

To add to that, two-thirds of the UK public feel that local communities are not given enough opportunity to provide input or make their views heard (67%).

When asked about the reasons why planning processes appear to be so flawed, bureaucracy was highlighted as a driving factor, followed by councils being under-resourced and a lack of expertise within the council. 

Mitchell Fasanya, co-founder of Searchland, said: “There is no ambiguity in these survey results. When asked for their opinion, the people of the UK have been damning of the lame planning processes that should have been improved and modernised a long time agoadding that One can’t, however, place all the blame with the councils alone; many of them do gallant work with insufficient resources”.

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