Yet again we hear from Government ministers telling the world they are going to deal with Britain's housing shortage by removing the red tape around the planning process.

This time is was the very clever Business Secretary and Bromsgrove MP Sajid Javid telling the world they will assume automatic planning permission for brownfield sites.

Details were contained in the 'Fixing the Foundations' report, published after last week's Budget, setting out measures to improve productivity by relaxing planning laws, streamlining skills training and investing in infrastructure.

Speaking during a visit to Longbridge, Mr Javid said the UK had long been "incapable of building enough homes to keep up with growing demand".

He said he was determined to see more planning permissions given and more homes built.

The implication in his comments and the report is that it is those pesky planning authorities with their NIMBY attitudes which are a major block on housing development.

But the experience in Birmingham is far from it. Earlier this year, we found there were more than 6,500 homes with planning permission which have not been built.

Of those, 270 sites with capacity for 5,997 homes had planning permission for more than a year but no work had started.

The majority of these are on brownfield or previously developed land because moves to release green belt land near Sutton Coldfield and Bromsgrove are still in progress.

Just last week, the construction of 119 houses on a former Erdington allotment site and eight houses on the site of the Acocks Green British Legion were approved.

The city council has already announced in its development plan proposals that there is space for 46,000 more houses in the urban area - it is practically bending over backwards to get people to build here.

The planning process in Birmingham is hardly the great block it is portrayed as.

Instead, we have developers sitting on ready sites and unwilling or unable to build for other reasons.

This would suggest smoothing the planning process will not lead to the great unleashing of house building indicated in the Fixing the Foundations report.