Dear Sirs,

This is more of call to action than a request for specific advice.

I have a plot of infill land between existing dwellings in a village in the home counties, washed over by the green belt. I've been on the local authority's Right To Build Register since its inception in 2016. Earlier this year, I submitted a planning application to build a single self build dwelling, highlighting the fact that self build is a material consideration and that I am also on the Register.

The application was refused and made no reference to self build or the Register. As part of the appeal, I submitted an FOI request to the local planning authority (LPA) asking for details of a breakdown of the Register and how many permissioned plots they had delivered. They disclosed that 76 individuals had joined the Register since inception and a total of 84 plots had been permissioned. To my astonishment they also stated that of this total, 66 plots were for replacement dwellings and therefore no net increase in new houses. Many of these applications don't explicitly mention self build in them, and moreover, none of the 84 plots were from or allocated to any of the 76 individuals on the Register who pay to join it in the hope of realising their dream of finding a plot to build their own home. And yet the council has the audacity to claim that supply exceeds the demand on the Register.

At best, this practice by the LPA is gaming the system and at worst is downright misleading to the people who have joined the Register which local authorities have a statutory obligation to maintain.

I would ask that you highlight this questionable practice and make a call to action to any reader who is on their local authority Right To Build Register to submit an FOI request to release a breakdown of the figures, because I suspect that this is a far from isolated malpractice.