23rd July 2025 ❘ Legal News and Commentary
Housing in Cumbria: What is blocking the bricks being laid?
The debilitating impact of nutrient neutrality requirements on residential housing numbers has quite rightly hit the headlines in recent years, but there are many other factors which are causing a stagnant housing delivery in Cumbria. Our Commercial Property Partner Robbie Mather discusses…
The Planning System has been much maligned (what’s new?), as it is seen to cause delays in the delivery of housing schemes and economic growth. This has been recognised by central government within their policy to bring 1.5million new homes during their term.
In Cumbria this identifies as a “local need” for the local authorities to provide housing of:
- Cumberland Council 1,100 units per year, and
- Westmorland & Furness 1,331 units per year
– with both authorities seeking to provide over half of these units as “affordable”.
To put this this into perspective, at present actual unit delivery has been only one third of these numbers.
Is Cumbria going to see a housing boom? Perhaps! There are several big developments taking place throughout Cumbria, for example, St Cuthbert’s Garden Village in Carlisle and huge scale investment into Barrow. But the planning system needs to make improvement in the following areas if it’s to meet the required unit numbers…
- Additional funding and resource – it is clear the local authorities are stretched on staffing resource to meet the demands and timescales associated with planning applications; this is true of a number of statutory consultees too.
- Nutrient neutrality – a continuous review of what the offset requirement should be and embracing alternative ‘off set’ measures.
- Pre application advice – it needs to be prompt, and whilst “non-binding”, it needs to provide a clearer path to an application being approved (or not) at the full application stage.
- Planning application timescales to be adhered to – the timescales for determination on applications are delayed far too frequently. There is an over reliance of “agreed” extensions as the applicant would prefer to wait for the approval to arrive, rather than submitting an appeal for “non determination” of the application.
- 106 Agreements – once a developer has reached approval at committee, the formal planning approval is only reached once the 106 Agreement (securing planning gains) has been entered into with the local authority. The Home Builders Federation recently released a staggering stat that 106 Agreements on average are taking over 12 months to complete! These legal agreements could be run in tandem with the application (at the developer’s risk), or there could be precedent templates that each authority specifies the developer should amend from.
- Call for “deliverable” sites – both local authorities have made “calls for sites” in the last year to try and achieve their target numbers for the coming years. Sites can achieve a planning approval but there are also many which have site and/or legal constraints which delay the delivery of the sites. Perhaps more could be done up front to give preferential application status to those sites which are truly deliverable.
Opportunity beckons for Cumbria’s housing delivery, if there can be improvements to the physical infrastructure (roads and utilities) of the county, and that of the local planning authorities.
If you are developer or a landowner selling for development, we can assist you in delivering your scheme. Find out more about our Commercial Property team and its services, here.