Listen to the full episode on YouTube here

Paul discusses the major hurdles facing house building developers today. From land scarcity to planning complexities, labour shortages to rising costs, Paul paints a vivid picture of an industry under pressure. But it's not all doom and gloom – he also touches on sustainable development practices and the potential for collaboration to create better homes and communities.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Land availability and planning issues are the two biggest barriers to growth for developers, accounting for about 40% each of reported problems.
• The planning system has become increasingly complex and under-resourced, leading to significant delays and hindering housing development.
• Labour shortages due to inadequate training and apprenticeships have made construction more challenging in recent years.
• Rising costs of materials and procurement issues have impacted the viability of many development projects.
• New environmental standards and regulations, while necessary, add further cost and complexity to the development process.
• Sustainable development and building with nature are becoming increasingly important in the industry.
• Collaboration between various stakeholders is crucial for creating better homes and communities.
• The podcast aims to bring together experts from across the industry to discuss solutions for creating much-needed housing in the right way.

BEST MOMENTS

"Land and planning are the problems and they always have been. Now, if you've got the right land and the right planning, any finance challenges tends to go away."

"Planning in particular is now worse in my opinion than it's ever been, certainly in my 40 years in the business, so the complexity of it is off the scale."

"Building stuff didn't use to be as difficult, actually. If you were a good builder and you knew what you were doing then building was the easy bit, to a large extent. Now, even that's not so easy."

"I'm now very much into super sustainable development and building with nature so I've been applying all of this for the last few years to all of my developments."

"We'll learn together how we can collaborate rather than fight and by working together we can all help create better places, spaces and homes and a much more beautiful world."

VALUABLE RESOURCES

ABOUT THE HOST 

Paul Higgs is a Chartered Planning and Development Surveyor with 40+ years' experience in land, planning and development and a 100% success track-record in winning planning consents.

Paul undertook his first refurb project when he was just 17 and then worked his way up from labouring on building sites to becoming Head of Land for renowned plc housebuilder, Barratt Developments. He managed to escape the corporate world in 2002 to set up what is now a multi-million pound award-winning property development company, Millbank Group.  

In 2013 Paul founded the Millbank Land Academy, the UK’s first training company dedicated to property development, to teach established and aspiring developers the insider secrets the big housebuilders don’t want you to know! 

Paul is also a founding investor and former board director of the industry-leading PropTech Co, LandTech, and has lectured on Advanced Development Valuations on the MSc Property Development at London South Bank University.

CONTACT METHOD

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-higgs/?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2F&originalSubdomain=uk

Millbank Land Academy: https://www.millbanklandacademy.co.uk