UKREiiF | What would Reform do to accelerate housebuilding?
Introducing tax breaks to help regenerate ailing town centres and cutting planning red tape would be among the poll-topping party’s focuses if it were to form a government at the next general election, according to deputy leader Richard Tice.
Promising a more fulsome policy platform by the time its party conference rolls around in September, Nigel Farage’s right-hand man gave a flavour of what a Reform UK government might do with the country’s much-criticised planning system.
Speaking at UKREiiF, Tice said developers should be given more autonomy to deliver against market need and seemed to speak in favour of a zonal approach to planning that would make for faster decisions.
Verdicts on broad matters such as whether a certain type of scheme is appropriate in a particular location should be taken democratically but, in the case of apartment schemes, details around the mix of units should be left up to the market, according to Tice.
“Trust the developer,” he said.
Describing the current system as dysfunctional, Tice, who made his millions in property after getting a degree in quantity surveying at the University of Salford, called for a fundamental overhaul of the system.
“Everybody’s whinged and moaned for the last 30 years about the cost of getting planning, the delays, the quality of planners. I think we’ve got to take a reset.
“You can’t just tinker at the edges,” he said. “I am old enough to remember when I got planning consent for literally a couple of drawings. 50 units, 10 weeks, 10 grand. Now, that would cost you a couple of hundred grand, if not 300 grand, and it would take you 10 months if you’re lucky.”
Tice also said the market should be left to decide whether or not to install certain technologies in new homes, including heat pumps, claiming that efforts to decarbonise are worsening project viability.
“If someone wants to put in a heat pump, more power to your elbow but that should be your choice. It shouldn’t be a forced government decision,” Tice said referring to the Future Homes Standard that sets out an ambition for heat pumps in most new homes.
Reviving town centres is a key pillar of what Reform will hope to achieve with its planning policies.
“There are so many dozens if not hundreds of towns in the Midlands, in the North of England, that are a shadow of where they were. So, regeneration is a massive, massive part of what we’re looking at.”
The deputy leader name-checked St Helens as once such place. Reform took control of the council from Labour at the local elections earlier this month and will have to decide where it stands on plans to regenerate the town centre, a process that is already well underway.
While a general election is likely years away, Reform, which has eight MPs and gained more than 1,400 seats at the recent local elections, is currently top of the opinion polls. To date, the party has not put forward a substantial policy platform but Tice said he recognises that levers would need to be pulled if his vision of thriving high streets is to come to pass.
“Don’t expect that post the next general election someone’s going to have a magic money tree and magic up whole load of money,” he said.
“It’s not going to happen so what you’ve got to do is create tax incentives to encourage the private sector to take some risks. I mean proper tax incentives, [like the] sort of things that you see in the US.”
While stopping short of saying he would scrap development in the Green Belt altogether, Tice said Reform’s approach to development would be heavily focused on brownfield in towns and cities.
“It’s not environmentally friendly to gobble up another 100 acres outside a town [that] looks as though a bomb’s just hit it,” he said.
Tice took to the stage at UKREiiF shortly after the party had named its candidate for the crunch by-election in Makerfield, where Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is fighting to return to parliament so he can challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership.
Burnham will be up against Robert Kenyon, who came second to Labour by around 5,000 votes in 2024.
“We’re bullish,” Tice said about his party’s chances against Burnham before taking a swipe at Labour’s candidate.
“He has a track record of flip flopping,” he said, alleging Burnham has changed back on his stance on rejoining the EU and only scrapped plans for a clean air zone in Manchester “because he realized it wasn’t very popular”.
“I’ve rebranded him the King of the U-turn, as opposed to the King of the North,” Tice said.
Burnham took to the stage yesterday to set out his bid to become Makerfield’s MP.
“The way we’ve been doing things for 50 years doesn’t work. How are you going to fix it?”
“Howsabout we do even more of the same?”
By Anonymous
No mention of course of the huge viability challenges that hamper the redevelopment of town centres across the North and Midlands. Although part of the bigger picture, less red cannot always be the one magic bullet.
By Anonymous
That’s all well and good talking about reducing planning “red tape” (by which I assume they mean affordable housing, because Reform hate poor people). A lot of the problems with getting things built are actually post-planning. Construction costs caused by Friend of Reform Trump’s war. Inflation and high interest rates caused by Friend of Reform Truss’s disastrous mini-budget. And a lack of construction skills caused by Reform’s Brexit which sent them all back to their countries and discouraged more to make the UK their home.
The UK would probably be booming if it wasn’t for Reform and their MPs
By Anonymous
I wouldn’t trust a developer as far as my nan could throw one
By RedTapeIsLife
Sounds like a common sense approach focusing on regeneration of brownfield sites in towns rather giving developers a free pass to build cheap looking housing estates on the greenbelt. The sooner Reform get in, the better!
By Rob Whittle
These charlatans would be a disaster if they formed a UK Government. They can barely run a council.
By Anonymous
He means tax breaks for the wealthy and their disgustingly rich doners. That wont help the poorer communities or ailing towns they claim, and claim to represent. Appropriate wealth tax to support public services and regeneration would be a better, fairer and more easily funded solution. But they wont do that.
By Joe Everyman (Family Guy ref...)
The sooner Reform get in, the sooner you’ll see what a clueless bunch of chancers sit behind Nigel’s grift. You can see it here: just build on brownfield sites, not in the Green Belt. Straight away you’ve exposed yourself as someone who doesn’t understand the scale of the issue, the nature of need and the reality of the delivery. And should therefore be nowhere need offering solutions to the problems.
By Reformwatch
This man clearly hasn’t got a clue about property development in the north. Without some form of public subsidy developers will not get involved in northern town centre regeneration. There will be no public subsidy available because they will have given it all away in tax cuts for their rich friends in the City of London. Reform are the enemy of the North.
By Anonymous
Good instincts. Planning and all the peripheral functions around it need to be massively scaled back. Fewer nit picky rules and fewer nit pickers to have to report to! As a bonus, it will save a fortune in middle-class unemployment benefit (that’s the civil service).
By John
Make it easier for developers. Attract investment. Make the UK a place where people with a vision for regeneration can actually get on with it. Just what we need! Go Reform.
@May 20, 2026 at 9:35 am By Anonymous – Name one scheme that has stalled specifically because of the Iran war! Developers are generally wanting to crack on and contractors are busy!
By Ant Agonist
Staggering lack of understanding from the Reformists on here, who can’t even read the runes of what’s actually happening, never mind what might happen in the future. Lots of rhetoric supported by very little knowledge.
By Northern Monkey
I think the only people backing Labour on this are the big developers — judging by the reaction to Reform comments on this thread.
Once Reform are fully in power, you can say goodbye to building your housing estates in the Greenbelt.
“Lack of understanding”? No — it’s called common sense. Why are Labour allowing the destruction of greenbelt land when the real issue isn’t a housing shortage, but an affordability crisis? Building expensive executive homes in the countryside won’t solve that. There are plenty of brownfield sites and empty properties that could go a long way towards meeting Labour’s 1.5 million homes target. But developers don’t favour those projects because they’re less profitable, and lobbying clearly has influence over government policy.
So what exactly is there not to understand?
By Sam Bowing
Only one positive statement about stopping greenbelt building, his boss has said this too.
By Anon
What is there to not understand? Most of it, judging by that response. Simple answers to complex problems, common sense framed around a limited understanding of the issues. All lead you to the wrong solutions. People could explain the scale of need, the importance of delivering affordable housing within Green Belt development (just read the NPPF to start with), the financial difficulties of delivering any housing on brownfield land even without affordable provision, the deliverabililty of sites with state intervention Reform wouldn’t provide even if it had the money. They could do all that and more. But you’d still think your simple, common sense solution of ‘Just build on brownfield land’ would solve the housing crisis. So what would be the point?
Just so you know, I’m not an advocate for building on the GB for the sake of it. But for decades governments have failed, for reasons that are at the heart of our inability to provide sufficient, decent housing (and Reform won’t change that approach one bit, because they’re not interested in you). We absolutely should be doing more to encourage brownfield development and decent use of land. But it’s not the answer in totality.
By Northern Monkey
Sam Bowing – unlike Richard Tice, who made millions of pounds from property development, I am not a developer. I do however understand the basic economics of what Mr Trice and Reform have said about property development and it doesn’t make sense. Brownfield first is a nice mantra however developing such sites due to contamination etc is very expensive and without public subsidy developers will not touch such sites with a bargepole. Reform have already said they will cut public spending to make tax cuts mainly benefitting their wealthy backers. Development public subsidy will be cut , it always was by the tories, so developers will either concentrate on development in London and the South East which is more economically viable than the North or they will want to develop cheaper greenbelt land. Reform have not explained how they square this circle because they can’t. Reforms rhetoric simply doesn’t add up and they know it.
By Anonymous
He says cutting red-tape and “trust the developer” on the day that it’s announced that there maybe a swath of prosecutions following the Grenfell tragedy. Disgustingly insensitive.
Whilst there is bureaucracy that can be made more efficient, there must always be checks and balances against the quality of what our industry delivers. The simple greed of some must not force us to cut corners, affecting both our integrity and conscience.
By Anon