The Competition and Markets Authority report on the housing sector should be a boost to the Yimby policy machine. It expressed grave concerns about the housing market operating like a cartel, and said that much of this was enabled by the current planning system.
The CMA was tasked with looking at the housing market a year ago, because targets are consistently missed, prices are consistently rising, and there are allegations that tactics such as ‘land banking’ are used to drive up profits. The result was a strong indictment of the planning system as it currently stands.
The report found that under-staffed planning departments, combined with a veto-heavy system, made getting permission to build protracted and unpredictable. This both limited the flow of new houses and squeezed small and medium-sized developers out of the market, enabling bigger players to bank massive profits and abuse their dominance.
A further investigation was launched into eight of the biggest builders for potential anti-competitive practices.
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