Planning Permission is the solution to the housing crisis

 BELIEVING  WE HAVE CONCRETED OVER OUR ISLAND GETS US NOWHERE Homes, excluding gardens take up 1.3%of land. (Report from the The Times on Sunday Martina Lees)

How much of this green and pleasant land has been concreted over,

do you reckon? A quarter? A third? On average the public thinks almost half (47.1 per cent) of England is developed.

This finding, from an Ipsos survey, stands out for just how far perception exceeds reality.

Only 8.7 per cent of the country is developed - that is, covered in permanent structures such as buildings, roads, railways or pavements.

Government Ordnance

Survey data shows homes, excluding gardens, take up just 1.3 per cent of land. The average (mean) guess for the percentage of land taken up by homes? Thirty times as much, at 38.9 per cent.

This gross overestimation in the minds of voters is the backdrop to the political debate on homebuilding. It goes some way to explaining why our leaders shy away from the planning reforms we really need. Yes, there have been plenty of planning headlines to draw a dividing line ahead of the next election. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, promises (with caveats) to build on the green belt, which Rishi Sunak vows to protect.

Likewise the Labour leader will reinstate the mandatory housing targets that the prime minister scrapped.

None of these measures addresses the root cause of our housing shortage, though.

Britain's planning system is a lottery where you have no certainty where you can build.

Every decision is made on a case-by-case basis, weighing up complex and contradictory policies. By contrast, most developed countries have rules-based systems. If you stick to the rules you know you can build.

The planning lottery is why my son, seven, and daughter, nine, don't have bedrooms.

We live in a dilapidated one-bedroom bungalow that we want to replace with a modest zero-carbon family home that our neighbours support.

Having spent £40,000 on planning experts we still do. not have permission to build.

Yet the public remains largely unaware of where the problem lies. In research for The Economist, Ipsos surveyed more than 2,000 adults, both renters and homeowners. A majority (55 per cent) say housing is unaffordable for "people like me". Many link affordability to supply: Britons are more than twice as likely to agree (50 per cent) than disagree (20 per cent) that housing will not become more affordable unless we build more homes every year. 

Yet they do not cite the planning system as the main reason for undersupply.

It comes fourth on the list of perceived reasons, after a lack of councils building homes, low interest from politicians and local opposition.

No surprise, then, that politicians won't tackle fundamental reform to bring planning certainty. When the Tories tried under Boris Johnson, it cost them a by-election and they have back-pedalled ever since.

Despite the headlines,

Labour has no appetite for "being brave" on root-and-branch planning reform either, as one insider told me. Their priority is to oil the

existing system and bring stability to reinvigorate housebuilding.

If the public doesn't see planning as broken, fixing it won't win votes.

But fixing the planning system is what is required to end the housing shortage long term. We need certainty on what and where we can build.

It is time to be brave, starting with an adult conversation on why the countryside is far from concreted over.