Mr. Daniel McLoughlin:

I am a strong advocate of mixed tenure development at scale because, as I said earlier, it involves one planning conversation and one contract for the mixed tenure to be approved. I will not use the term "take care of" but we are dealing with a situation where the approved housing bodies, AHBs, require land and we are anxious to progress mixed tenure communities across all of the various Government schemes; that gives us the best opportunity to do it, all as part of one conversation. It is therefore worth quite a bit of pain.

When we get to Part 8 we keep talking about the public spending code and the four stage process. Since our troubles in 2008 and 2011 we have a public spending code and all approval processes including housing, the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund, URDF or major capital spendingprojects mirror that process. In considering adjustments to that we need to reflect on the need for a public spending code and how we might deal with that or provide more agility within it.

Working against that framework, when we come through come planning we are effectively through two stages of the process. We must then take a planning consent, which is an outline design proposal, to detailed design stage. We have two choices. We can design it in-house, get architects to design it or go to the market for a design and build solution. I said two, but it is really two and a half options. That takes 12 months either way. During that 12 month window, we also need to carry out all of the environmental assessments, ground, archeological and heritage surveys and so on. That is a lot of moving parts and, as I said earlier, the management of all the sub-consultants within the timeframe, some of whom are season dependent, is quite tricky.

We then get to the detailed design stage where approval is needed again. Then we go to tender which is a two stage process when developing at scale. Stage 1 is to ask interested parties to put their names forward to adjudicate on their capacity and competency to undertake a project at scale. At that point we move to stage 2. Unfortunately there is currently a degree of hesitancy between stage 1 and stage 2. People who enter stage 1 do not necessarily stay in the race for stage 2. The two stage process is another timing issue. Then we get the final tender and that has to be approved. Then we go to site. As regards the timescale outlined to the committee - if we assume there is a conversation in a council chamber or an area committee about a greenfield site without any development or infrastructure constraints - from concept and from broad understanding at council level to handing over a key, four years is good.