Kate Barker's review is, as you would expect, a weighty report, but housebuilders will find all 158 tightly-written pages of it pretty happy reading.
For years, they have been complaining that the planning system is suffocating development. Now someone in authority has given them a sympathetic hearing. Barker talks about the impracticality of some brownfield development, the impracticality of urban capacity studies, the cost and inefficiency of section 106 agreements, and more.
Barker's recommendations hold out the prospect of a clearer, simpler, faster planning process. At the review's launch, Barker put it in language the housebuilding industry loves: "We're offering opportunities to developers and landholders to make bigger profits." It is not an offer that government has ever made before, and it isn't without strings. In return, housebuilders will be expected to deliver more homes, built to a better standard using prefabrication. True, there is the little matter of a development tax, but Barker's bargain may be worth taking. She may not have the physical stature, and she is, of course, a she, but Kate Barker is the nearest housebuilders are going to get to a knight in shining armour.
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