<p>The industry has been reacting to the appointment of Liz Truss as the UK’s new prime minister, with companies expressing their hopes and needs for housebuilding under the incoming new government.</p> <p>James Thomson, ceo of Gleeson, said the affordable homes builder looked forward to “engaging positively” with the new PM. The key priority for the sector, he stated, was “how the government better supports the delivery of affordable homes”. </p> <p>The industry needed an “improved planning environment” to achieve the above, Thomson added, “such as through greater investment in planning officers, implementing Low Planning Zones and new investment zones as quickly as possible, and sending a message from government to local authorities about the need to help young, first-time buyers onto the housing ladder”. </p> <p>Resolving planning issues was “one of the top items” on the new PM’s agenda, agreed Simon Cox, md at land agency Walter Cooper. This meant<span>, he said</span>, changing the housebuilding rhetoric of <span>recent times</span> - shifting from “pandering to the NIMBY masses” and the new PM distancing herself from previous statements made by other conservative MPs such as Michael Gove. “Or face alienating the housebuilding community entirely”.</p> <p>Cox called upon Truss “to work with those …