A new Housing & Finance Institute report has highlighted that housing growth is being held back by sluggish performance by utility companies. Perhaps there is then some truth in our long standing stance that housing growth is not being held up by the planning system.
The separation of retail and wholesale elements of the water companies in preparation for the liberalising of the water market in 2017 is unlikely to speed up their response in the short term. so some changes may well be needed so its timely that the report has recommended that local authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships undertake what is now being called ‘Infrastructure Dependency Mapping’ at a local and sub-regional. The idea is that this will provide a database of information about the capacity of the local electricity grid and water networks. Also their capacity to respond to enquiries.
Allen Creedy is our partner responsible for infrastructure investments supports the recommendations in the report; he said;
Enquiries for new connections take less time now than a couple of years ago but can still take more than two months to get a response, connections can take even longer to get an agreed date…..if the Secretary of State had the power to force utilities to provide responses and connections “in a timely manner” this would reduce the time taken to deliver new developments.