There's only so many reality TV and talent contests I can stomach on a
weekend before my mind is stupefied into a mush reminiscent of
runny guacamole and I begin to rock in my chair dribbling.
So to maintain some semblance of sanity I thought I would do a little
devilling back into planning application history to see if some sort of pattern
might inform the future.
Yep, I really need to get a life.
Anyway, the chart below plots applications submitted in England since
1989 and appears to offer some perspective of where we might be going over the
next few years in development terms.
The late 1980's was a boom time in property development with land values
soaring and applications at an all time high. And then 1987 happened. Black
Monday in October 1987 saw a stock market collapse of unprecedented size
and caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to fall by 22.6%. This
collapse, larger than that of 1929, was initially handled well by the economy,
and the stock market began to recover. It soon turned out
that the quick recovery was illusory, and by 1990, economic malaise had
returned with the beginning of the Gulf War and the resulting 1990
spike in the price of oil, which increased inflation. Subsequent years saw high
unemployment, massive government budgetary deficits, and slow Gross
Domestic Product (GDP).
You see where I'm going with this?
2005 was the peak in applications at the same level as the late 1980's.
2007 saw the beginnings of the bank crisis and by 2010 unemployment was
accelerating away, Government spending was yet to be brought under control and
GDP was dropping.
And here we are in 2012 at pretty much the same planning application
levels as those being experienced in 1992.
OK. So this is by no means an incisive analysis based on a rigorous data
analysis and use of heavy duty algorithms. I'm still suffering from post
traumatic 'Britain's Got Talent' disorder to go that far. Nope, I
just looked at the graph and remembered what happened when.
And you know what, the phrase 'Life has a habit of repeating itself'
didn't come about by accident.
So, are there any common trends that could be extrapolated from the
past? On the same basis there will be a small rise in applications
between 2012 and 2015 followed by another dip before the economy begins to
support a steady rise up to another peak in around 2025, after which the
roller-coaster will start on down again.
The bored musings of a sad old planner perhaps. But the DCLG published
their latest quarterly Statistics on Friday and, guess what, there was a
1% increase in the number of applications submitted against the same quarter in
2010. Spooky or what?
If you’re as sad as me, the latest statistics can be found here:
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