Delays in the UK planning system – down to brick colour and tile choices – are stalling housing delivery. We need 3,000 new planners and faster approvals to meet national housing goals and boost economic growth, says Tim Roberts

When Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis you don’t, as a house builder, expect to have to go to a planning appeal over the colour of bricks or the types of tile being used in a new development.

These are the small but important details that should be ironed out quickly after a planning permission has been granted, but at Henry Boot we are finding that these ‘reserved matters’ are clogging up a system which the government is rightly desperate to improve.

Amazingly, we have found ourselves launching appeals for non-determination – when a local council fails to decide on an issue within a reasonable time – on the colour of bricks and types of tile because the planning system just cannot cope.

From our Sheffield base, Henry Boot has been building since 1886 – and by 1914 our founder was using his six trucks and 20 horse-drawn carts to deliver government contracts to support the war effort, building army barracks, aerodromes and sea plane bases.

Mr Boot, his son Charles, who built Pinewood Studios in the 1930s, and the generations that succeeded him must be........

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