Andrew Fraser, Assetz Capital’s CCO examines why finance, viability and certainty remain critical
Can you tell us about your career journey, and how it has shaped your view of the property and development market today?
I’ve spent more than 25 years in property construction finance, working through multiple market cycles alongside developers and from the banking side of the industry. That experience has given me a strong appreciation for the challenges that economic uncertainty, regulatory requirements, and changing market conditions can create.
Today, there is a perception that finance is primarily about securing the lowest price. While pricing is important, my experience has shown that long-term success is built on something far more valuable: consistent, knowledgeable support throughout the entire transaction. The strongest relationships are true partnerships, where both parties work collaboratively to navigate challenges and stay focused on delivering successful outcomes.
One of the key lessons I’ve learned is that reliability and commitment matter just as much as competitive terms. Some newer market entrants can underestimate the importance of partnership, which can leave developers unsupported when challenges arise mid-process. In contrast, I believe the best results come from working alongside clients from start to finish, providing clear guidance and unwavering support all the way to the finish line.
You’ve said planning reform should be judged by its impact on SME housebuilders. What would success look like in practice?
Success would ultimately look like a system where SME housebuilders can quickly get planning for small sites without costly delays.
For small infill sites and developments on brownfield, these represent a huge opportunity for SME housebuilders, allowing them to acquire land and deliver small schemes that minimise impact on local infrastructure, while providing high quality developments and increasing local supply.
Given the relatively low impact of these developments, a planning system that provides a default ‘yes’ to sites that follow planning rules would drastically improve speed and certainty for SME developers. Without the need for drawn out planning committees and approvals, instead with officers being able to make the decision alone, this would be hugely beneficial, while reducing the overall burden on the planning system.
For SME housebuilders, this would allow them to move on site much quicker, reducing friction over changing build costs and terms of finance. And for local communities, this would speed up the delivery of new homes without the major disruption associated with larger-scale new developments.
Do you believe the Planning and Infrastructure Act will speed up delivery, or are bigger barriers still holding projects back?
I do believe it will help at the margins, but it will not, on its own, unlock delivery at the scale the government wants.
The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 is clearly aimed at one of the market’s most visible bottlenecks: slow, uncertain planning. In particular, it looks designed to reduce friction in the decision-making process by pushing more determinations through officers rather than committees, simplifying the route from submission to consent. If that translates into more predictable outcomes and fewer avoidable delays, that is a real improvement. It should also help bring down the professional time and cost that gets burned in the planning stage, which matters for viability.
But planning is only one part of the delivery equation. High interest rates and affordability pressure reduce end-buyer demand, and that feeds straight back into what is financially viable to start on site. Where sales rates are uncertain, developers will naturally pause, redesign, or re-phase schemes.
On the delivery side, labour shortages and weak apprenticeship pipelines are constraining output. Materials costs and supply availability remain challenging in certain packages. Those are buildability constraints, not planning constraints.
And structurally, SME builders remain underrepresented and constrained by access to capital and risk appetite, while larger developers will often control delivery pace to match absorption and protect pricing. So, while the act can reduce delay, it doesn’t remove the bigger viability and delivery barriers that still dictate whether projects actually start and finish.
How much does inconsistent local authority decision-making delay smaller housing schemes?
The consistency of decision making really varies council by council, creating a postcode lottery where two projects of a similar scale can face different timelines depending on the local authority.
For smaller developments that don’t have the same level of resources as larger developments, this inconsistency can be damaging. Time lost in the planning phase can force knock-on changes to procurement and delivery sequencing.
It can also change behaviour earlier in the process. When decision making feels unpredictable, smaller housebuilders can become discouraged or more selective about what applications they submit. Over time, this shrinks the pipeline of small housing projects.
At a national level, there have been discussions about the government’s housebuilding target of 1.5 million being downgraded to 1.2 million. Planning consistency is one of the structural blockers that makes scaling supply harder.
Why do SME housebuilders find it harder than larger developers to deal with planning complexity?
SME housebuilders find it harder to deal with planning complexity than larger developers because they are hit harder with the system’s risks, costs and unpredictability more sharply. For large developers, planning friction is often a manageable inefficiency. For SMEs, it can be a make-or-break barrier.
For SMEs, upfront costs are harder to absorb, whereas large developers can spread these costs across a large number of units.
Delays also hit SMEs financially much faster. A planning timeline that extends over a few months can turn into immediate pressure on cash flow and holding costs.
When these setbacks happen, SMEs are hit harder and take longer to recover. This is why inconsistency and delays matter so much. It doesn’t just slow projects, but it actively squeezes smaller builders out of the system, reducing competition and overall housing supply.
What changes would make the planning system more predictable and easier to work with?
The problems here are not just that the planning is slow, but that it’s unpredictable. For SME housebuilders, uncertainty can often be worse than delay. The most effective reforms are ones that make outcomes quicker and more consistent.
A key change would be rules-based decision making, with a ‘yes-by-default’ approach. If a scheme is compliant with policy the default outcome should be approval. In the same way, when a scheme is refused, the reason should be clear and grounded in policy rather than to be interpreted.
A big source of inconsistency is where some councils have clear current plans while others rely on outdated or incomplete ones. When policy is unclear, decisions can become subjective. Mandatory local plans, updated frequently enough to reflect current needs and constraints, would both speed up decision making and produce more consistent outcomes.
Timeframes also need to be faster and properly enforced. Deadlines exist, but they can often be missed without consequence, which means planning can become guess work. However, enforcement can only work if planning departments have the capacity to deliver it. Implementation is not possible if councils are under-resourced, so resourcing has to be treated as part of the policy reform.
Another practical improvement would be reducing late-stage surprises, particularly around viability and conditions. There needs to be clearer requirements up front and standardised viability assumptions. Even after this approval, projects can still stall. Predictability shouldn’t stop at permission; it should extend to delivery.
If planning decisions were faster and more consistent, how quickly could SME developers bring forward new homes?
That’s a good question. For many SME developers, the issue isn’t necessarily how quickly they can bring forward new homes, it’s whether they have the confidence to commit to a project in the first place. Faster and more consistent planning decisions would provide much greater certainty around costs, timelines, and viability, allowing developers to make investment decisions with confidence.
When planning outcomes are unpredictable, developers can be reluctant to deploy capital or acquire sites because the risks become harder to manage. Greater consistency in the planning system would encourage more SME developers to move forward with schemes and unlock stalled opportunities, resulting in increased housing delivery.
How does planning uncertainty affect funding decisions and project viability?
Planning uncertainty cuts right to the heart of whether a housing scheme gets funded at all. For SME developers in particular, this can kill projects before they even get started.
From a lender’s perspective, planning risk increases the chance of a facility needing extensions. Lenders price that uncertainty in, which for SMEs often means more equity is required upfront or tighter terms.
The knock-on effect is that fewer sites become bankable. The sites most affected by planning uncertainty are often the schemes where SMEs deliver well, such as small urban infill and brownfield plots. When those variables cannot be pinned down early, viability gets squeezed quickly.
Are some regions getting planning right more than others, and what can others learn from them?
There are clear signs that some regions are getting planning right more than others. Recent HBF and Glenigan data suggests that areas such as the North West, Yorkshire & Humber, parts of the East Midlands, and the South East have generally shown more resilience in planning approvals than many other regions, despite the wider slowdown in housing delivery.
What tends to separate the stronger-performing areas is not necessarily that decisions are made dramatically faster, but that the planning process is more predictable and consistent. Authorities with up-to-date local plans and clearer policy frameworks give developers greater certainty around outcomes and viability, while proactive planning teams also support a more streamlined process.
Where the system works well, the conversation moves quickly beyond debating planning principles and focuses instead on solving delivery challenges. That certainty is incredibly important for SME developers. Confidence to invest in land and commit capital often comes from knowing what the planning process is likely to deliver, rather than simply how quickly a decision is issued.
The lesson for other regions is that consistency and clarity can be just as valuable as speed. Developers are far more willing to bring forward schemes when they can trust the process, understand the requirements, and plan with confidence.
Do you think these reforms will help more SME housebuilders enter the market, or mainly benefit larger established players?
They will help SMEs at the margin, but on their own they are more likely to benefit larger, established developers first. The immediate winners tend to be the businesses that can respond fastest to a policy shift. Larger firms usually have land banks, in-house planning capability, established consultant teams and the balance sheet to move quickly when the goalposts change. Many SMEs, by contrast, need to rebuild capacity and confidence before they can scale activity again.
Some elements of reform can also skew towards larger schemes. Where policy and process are designed around strategic allocations, major sites or delivery at scale, that naturally aligns more easily with volume builders than with smaller operators whose strength is turning over small and mid-sized sites with tight programmes and tight cash flow.
That said, there are clear areas where SMEs do gain. More consistent decision-making reduces the postcode lottery and makes smaller sites less risky to pursue. Faster approvals cut holding costs, improve cash flow, and help viability. For an SME running a lean pipeline, the difference between a predictable timetable and an open-ended one is often the difference between proceeding and standing still.
The bigger issue is that planning reform does not fully solve the constraints that keep SMEs out of the market, including:
- Access to development finance that matches the reality of delivery risk and programme risk
- Land pricing and the ability to compete for sites
- Labour and contractor shortages, plus volatility in build costs
- The broader regulatory burden beyond planning, where complexity and delay can still sit elsewhere in the process
So yes, the reforms should help SMEs, and they may make it easier for smaller builders to take decisions with more confidence. But the biggest immediate gains are likely to go to larger developers. A meaningful SME resurgence depends on what happens next on finance, land access and pipeline creation, not planning alone.
Andrew Fraser
www.assetzcapital.co.uk
Andrew Fraser is Chief Commercial Officer at Assetz Capital. Assetz Capital is one of the leading SME property finance lenders. Since 2013, the company has been working alongside both developers and investors to realise their business goals, through combining their ambition with its own expertise.