The Government's announcement of its New Homes Accelerator – a strategic programme intended to ease the impact of damaging bottlenecks in the housing delivery process – has been welcomed by the National Federation of Builders (NFB).

The Accelerator is expected to speed up the construction of up to 300,000 new homes in England, currently stalled due to significant regulatory red tape.

Welcoming the announcement, Richard Beresford, Chief Executive of the NFB, said: "We are delighted that the Government have accepted our recommendations for it to play a greater role in overcoming local planning barriers. The New Homes Accelerator will play an overdue role in ensuring large scale development delivers more quickly, while informing their New Towns ambition and potentially serving as a catalyst for Homes England to be given greater strategic responsibilities."

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The Government outlined the details of this programme, assigning a team from the Ministry of Housing and Homes England to work across government and with local councils, promising to bring together key players, including government agencies, local planning departments, and house builders offering a localised approach and introducing planning experts on the ground to tackle specific barriers at each site.

Where required, greater levels of local planning capacity could be provided where there are barriers and work across the board to make sure planning decisions are made in a timely fashion. 

A call for evidence has already been launched calling upon landowners, local authorities and housebuilders to come forward with details of blocked sites that have significant planning issues

Rico Wojtulewicz, Head of Policy and Market Insight at the NFB, said: "The New Homes Accelerator will show the Government what life is really like for the housebuilding industry and why planning is a considerable reason for our housing crisis and growth struggles. They should be commended for getting on with the job so quickly.

"It also suggests that Ministers understand different site sizes attract different sized builders and different challenges. We hope this means they will accept our NPPF consultation recommendation to support SME housebuilders and organic growth by creating a new, 'Medium' site size definition of between ten and fifty homes, which would sit between the existing 'Minor' (fewer than 10) and 'Major' (10 and above) definitions."