Paul Brocklehurst has been Chairman of the Land, Planning and Development Federation for over seven years. Here, he tells Housing View and Brookbanks about the challenges faces by small developers, the need for bold steps by the government, and turning the ship around
by Ben Wakeling
This article accompanies a podcast hosted by Brookbanks – watch the whole conversation now.
The challenge of small and medium-sized (SME) developers is what Paul Brocklehurst, Chairman of the Land, Planning and Development Federation (LPDF), describes as a “pet topic”.
It is easy to see why: after an initial career in corporate banking, Paul has spent the last twenty years in property as a developer and land promoter, and was instrumental in bringing the LPDF into fruition in 2018, leading the development of the body which represents land promoters and housebuilders.
You will find SMEs throughout the list of LPDF members, but they can be hard to define. Surely it’s just a housebuilder who builds a certain number of units a year, I ask?
“That’s a really great question, and actually it’s not as simple to answer as one would think,” Paul explains. “If you read the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), then it would define an ‘SME developer’ as basically firms who do site sizes of up to nine units. I think that might be an adequate definition of a ‘small’ developer, but it ignores the medium part of the naming.
“A medium sized developer could be somebody who potentially develops up to 500 to 1,000 homes a year. Basically, somebody who is not a volume housebuilder, maybe operates in one region – two, at most – and is also likely to be privately owned.”
We need bold changes if we’re going to see a meaningful impact on economic growth.
One fact that is crystal clear, however, is the steep decline in SME developers over the last few decades. Research by bodies such as the Home Builders Federation (HBF) and Lichfields – in collaboration with the LPDF – has revealed that SMEs contributed 40% of all homes built in 1988. In 2010, that figure had dropped to just 10%.
The challenges faced by SMEs are wide-ranging and often deeply disproportionate. A medium-sized developer will experience the same hurdles faced by a volume housebuilder (“an unfair disadvantage for those kinds of developers”, says Paul): a combination of planning fees, professional fees and Section 106 obligations total an average of £2 million per small development, according to an HBF report in October 2025.
The cost is one thing; planning delays are another. “We’ve done research recently which shows that over the last ten years, the average determination period for a planning application has increased from six months to nearly two years,” Paul explains. “Everyone in the planning system has experienced that; but for an SME it creates huge problems for how they can run their business.”
This is a big ship to turn around. Since coming into power in July 2024, the Labour government has unveiled a raft of changes – reversing Conservative changes to the NPPF, the grey belt policy, the Planning Infrastructure Bill – but none will have an overnight effect.
“One of the problems with the housing debate is that some people think you change a policy and it will have an immediate impact within six to twelve months,” says Paul. “But that isn’t the case. We need bold changes if we’re going to see a meaningful impact on economic growth, and I’m hoping over the next three to six months we’ll see some positive developments on a range of fronts.”
There are some glimmers of hope for SMEs, too. In December, Housing Secretary Steve Reed announced a revamped National Planning Policy Framework, which proposes to bring in a new ‘medium site’ category for developments between 10 to 49 homes and exemption from Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) costs for sites up to 0.2 hectares.
This would be welcome: BNG features near the top of a long list of regulatory requirements which SMEs have to deal with when calculating the feasibility of a development. Whilst the sector breathed a sigh of relief during the Autumn Budget when Rachel Reeves announced that proposed Landfill Tax changes were being scrapped, a typical small or medium-sized developer still has to manage costs associated with nutrient neutrality, water neutrality – and, of course, the highly-controversial Building Safety Levy.
“There’s a simple answer to that,” says Paul, referring to the Levy. “They shouldn’t be paying it. They weren’t involved in creating the problem in the first place. I’m not even sure that volume housebuilders should be paying it, because they’re already meeting the remediation costs for the tall buildings that they constructed. It’s not a fair tax all round, but it is particularly unfair on small or medium-sized housebuilders.”
We have a housing crisis. Everybody acknowledges that at a national and political level. SMEs are a large part of the solution.
So where does this leave SMEs, as they face a mountain of challenges against the backdrop of the government’s 1.5 million homes target?
“We have a housing crisis,” says Paul. “Everybody acknowledges that at a national and political level. SMEs are a large part of the solution, and a huge part of the equation. But they’re not the only part.”
The industry waits with bated breath for the impact of recent government measures to help clear the path for SMEs. In the meantime, Paul and the LPDF continue to give a voice to the hundreds of thousands of builders who just want to build. A recent letter from the LPDF to the Treasury prior to the Autumn budget urged the government to “unlock the potential” of SME developers through a “bold and targeted package of support”.
“Without urgent action,” says the report, “there is a real risk that more SME builders will exit the market altogether. With the right support, however, they can be part of a stronger, more dynamic and more resilient housing sector, one that delivers homes, jobs and investment in every part of the country.”
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