CALA Homes has more than doubled its landbank of “oven-ready” sites to £827m, to get round new Scottish planning rules.
CALA, one of the biggest housebuilders in
In so doing, it increased its landbank of sites with residential consent from a total value of £350m last year to £827m in 2007.
The new bill puts more emphasis on community consultation prior to development, gives planning authorities greater powers of enforcement, and requires development plans to be updated every five years.
Robert Millar, group development director for parent company CALA Group, said: “Sites are taking longer and longer to go through the system because of the need to carry out more community consultation exercises, even for sites as small as half a dozen units.”
He added “Our landbank is at an all-time high. With the planning process set to become increasingly complex and costly, and permission for an average site now taking up to one year to achieve, we want to acquire more sites and put them into the planning process in the next six months.”
CALA now has 23,300 sites in total, with an estimated end-value of £6.6bn.
