{"id":878305,"date":"2025-12-17T23:16:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T05:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/17\/industry-welcomes-building-safety-levy-exemption-proposal\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T23:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T05:16:11","slug":"industry-welcomes-building-safety-levy-exemption-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/17\/industry-welcomes-building-safety-levy-exemption-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"Industry welcomes Building Safety Levy exemption proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Construction industry heavyweights have thrown their weight behind proposals to exempt medium-sized home schemes from the Building Safety Levy (BSL).<\/p>\n

Housing secretary Steve Reed (pictured) on Tuesday (16 December) announced a raft of changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), including an exemption from the levy for sites of fewer than 50 homes.<\/p>\n

Industry figures welcomed the proposals, after warning for years that the levy \u2013 due to be introduced later this year \u2013 would disproportionately affect smaller housebuilders<\/a>\u00a0and could lead to a reduction in housing delivery.<\/p>\n

Brian Berry, chief executive of the Federation of Master Builders (FMB), said the proposed reforms were \u201ca positive push in the right direction\u201d to give smaller developers a larger foothold in the housing market and would \u201chelp SMEs grow their businesses\u201d.<\/p>\n

The proposals \u2013 which will now be consulted on \u2013 would introduce an exemption from the BSL for sites of between 10 and 49 homes.<\/p>\n

The draft policy\u2019s inclusion is a victory for the National Federation of Builders (NFB), which has lobbied hard on the proposal in recent months.<\/p>\n

Rico Wojtulewicz, head of policy and market insight at the NFB, said: \u201cThis NPPF review gives us an opportunity to realign the planning cogs and make planning policy more predictable and coherent.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs contributing authors to the \u2018Identifying Land\u2019 section in the NPPF, it also offers us an opportunity to advise the government on how it can do more to help SMEs, while pushing for our medium-sized site proposal to be front and centre of their thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

The levy, set to come in on 1 October 2026, will act as a tax on new developments<\/a> to fund the removal of unsafe cladding on buildings of 11-18 metres where the developer cannot be traced or has to agree to cover the costs upfront.<\/p>\n

Previously, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said the levy could raise \u00a35.1bn for remediation work.<\/p>\n

The MHCLG said in the consultation document that the upper limit of 49 homes was \u201cappropriate\u201d due to the majority of those schemes being delivered by SMEs.<\/p>\n

It said that many of the responses to an initial consultation on the medium sites policy were supportive of the change.<\/p>\n

However, some raised concerns it could impact on the availability of building safety remediation funding and\/or the pace of works.<\/p>\n

Some councils warned they mainly have sites of fewer than 50 homes, meaning they could face levy deficits if the new rule came into effect.<\/p>\n

Swift bricks and heritage sites<\/h3>\n

MHCLG\u2019s proposals also included a requirement for swift bricks in new developments, as well as rule changes on the redevelopment of heritage sites.<\/p>\n

Swift bricks are hollow bricks designed to provide nesting sites for cavity nesting birds.<\/p>\n

On heritage assets, MHCLG said respondents to the working paper were \u201cconcerned\u201d that there was too much focus on harm and not enough \u201cpositive support for the sustainable redevelopment of heritage assets to support growth\u201d \u2013 particularly for heritage buildings in disrepair.<\/p>\n

They said developments at heritage buildings had become \u201ca regular ground for legal challenge\u201d thanks to complicated planning and heritage rules. MHCLG has now proposed explicit policies on the approach to developing world heritage sites and conservation areas, to reduce the number of legal challenges.<\/p>\n

MHCLG will also consult on its default \u2018<\/a>yes\u2019 for projects around train stations<\/a>, which it proposed last month. It has also proposed minimum dwelling densities around train stations to \u201cmaximis[e] opportunities for sustainable development\u201d.<\/p>\n

It proposed minimum densities of 40 dwellings per hectare around all stations, and 50 dwellings per hectare around well-connected stations.<\/p>\n

Biodiversity net gain<\/h3>\n

In the new year, MHCLG will release details on \u201ceasements and exemptions for different categories of site\u201d relating to biodiversity net gain (BNG), which compels developers to increase the natural habitat around their sites by 10 per cent.<\/p>\n

In a release accompanying the consultation, it said developers warned the \u201csystem needs to work better for some of the smallest developments\u201d, with particular challenges on brownfield sites.<\/p>\n

The government said it would propose exemptions for sites of up to 0.2 hectares, and will consult on exemptions for brownfield sites of up to 2.5 hectares.<\/p>\n

Wojtulewicz said: \u201cThe reforms announced on BNG are welcomed and will help small projects, but the policy is still broken. For as long as it remains based on broad habitats and not ecosystems, it will continue to make projects unviable, while not doing enough for wildlife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heather Lindley-Clapp, a director at planning consultancy Nexus Planning, said that, from a regeneration perspective, one of the most significant reforms is the introduction of a permanent presumption in favour of suitably located development within settlements, unless harms would substantially outweigh benefits.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThis effectively creates a default \u2018yes\u2019 for brownfield development,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Joshua Stein<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Construction industry heavyweights have thrown their weight behind proposals to exempt medium-sized home schemes from the Building Safety Levy (BSL). Housing secretary Steve Reed (pictured) on Tuesday (16 December) announced a raft of changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), including an exemption from the levy for sites of fewer than 50 homes. Industry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":878306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[648,4279],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-878305","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-industry","8":"category-welcomes"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}