As we report today, there’s been a nationwide downturn in construction. The issue is especially acute in London – the place housing is needed most – where the number of new home starts is hurtling towards zero. At this rate, there is just no way the government will meet its target of building 1.5m new homes by the end of the parliament.
The complexity of our planning system must shoulder a great deal of the blame for sluggish housebuilding. And if you want to know just how bad things are, look no further than this planning application for a shed in the City of London that I came across this week.
The shed, or “security kiosk” as the City Corporation calls it, is situated in the car park underneath the Guildhall, where the security guy sits, monitoring the CCTV. The Corporation plans to knock down the current shed, which is in a dilapidated state, and replace it with a (very) slightly larger one.
Should be a doddle, right? A few bricks, a few bits of timber, a couple of builders – a week or two should do it? Wrong.
In fact, since the application for this shed was submitted in April, no fewer than 26 separate planning documents have been produced, totalling 86 pages and more than 15,000 words.
The application was submitted to the City of London Corporation (by the City of London Corporation) at the beginning of April, and it was not until this week – a full four months later – that planners at the Corporation approved their own designs.
Part of the issue here is that the Guildhall is a listed building, so anything built within its complex – even if underground and not visible from the street – must submit a lengthy “heritage statement” to ensure it does not impose upon the building’s heritage, including a survey of the area’s history and an assessment of the significance of the application.
To everyone’s shock, the heritage statement for the shed notes that “there is little of architectural or historical interest” in the car park, and therefore that the shed does not interfere with the building’s heritage.
If we lived in a sensible country, that would be all they’d need to say. Sadly for the planners and the architects, they had to include another 5,000 words, much of which effectively repeats this line many times over. They also have to show how the building will look within its architectural context, which, as it turns out, is next to a pile of old crates, behind overflowing bins and below some sewage pipes.
Planners also needed to seek a review by Historic England, the government’s statutory adviser on sites of architectural interest. Mercifully, they declined to comment on the application, but somehow their letter took two pages and 260 words to confirm as much.
I was curious to know how much the application for the shed cost – but the Corporation told me this would “fall out of scope” of any Freedom of Information request.
Thankfully the architects were kind enough to confirm that the fees for the application stood at £15,000. That is not to say that they have overcharged – plainly they had many hoops to jump through and their work is thorough. But even David Cameron would blush at the costs involved in this shed.
It typically takes around 8 weeks to put together an application of this kind. Add that to the four month approval time and we’re looking at the best part of a year for the project.
However much it does end up costing and however long it takes, the City can take pride that it has produced one of the most expensive sheds ever made. Well done everyone.
