It’s not so much restrictive rules, as it is a planning system that prioritises local concerns, regardless of how minor, or incorrect, over any kind of national priority.
Our planning system is literally designed to maximally empower NIMBYism. There are no well defined planning rules, or zoning, or planning process. Every council develops their own planning policy, and broadly has the power to block any project. The result is building anything requires millions of pounds, and years of effort, to work through a councils arbitrary, and ever changing planning rules, with no guarantee of any kind of success.
Most of the rest of the world operates some kind of permitted development zoning policy, where planning policy tends to provide clear rules around what can always be built in a specific area. So it possible to start a development process knowing that certain aspects of your project must be approved, as long as you follow the rules. Unlike the UK where you project might be approved if you managed to somehow follow all the undocumented, arbitrary, and changing local rules.
Consequences are quite simple, only projects that are absolutely guaranteed to return large profits if successful are built. And for those projects there’s very little incentive for high quality building, because there’s no competition in the area, and costs of getting permission are so high, that a developers unique selling point is their ability to get permission, not their ability to actually build well.
With regards to Grenfell, that’s the consequence of have shambolic building regulations (I.e. regulations on the quantity and safety of buildings), and a construction industry that can only make money by cutting corners, because the supply of actual work is so low.
While not denying in any way that this sort of thing is a real problem, I think you're overstating differences between the UK and "the rest of the world".
Although zoning in the USA does work to a degree as you say ("must be approved if you ..."), in reality lots of projects that seem as if they ought to be a sure thing for approval face years of process-based objections from local groups, leading to them never being built at all, or having to be significantly revised due to changes demanded or created by circumstances shifting.
The UKs planning system is pretty much unique. Almost no other country in the world operates a planning system where every local authority basically gets to make up their own rules around planning, and where it’s practically impossible for national government to enforce simple things like minimum house building quotas.
If you want to understand why building infrastructure in the UK is so difficult, then you need to look no further than our planning system. It has uniquely managed to completely strangle infrastructure building. Sure NIBYism exists in the U.S., and there’s lots of planning red tape, and plenty of very poorly considered planning rules (such as single use zoning, and a strange obsession with single family homes). But in comparison to the UK, it’s practically pleasant to work with.
Of course it helps that the U.S. has a crap ton of spare land just handing around. Much easier to build a new shopping mall, highway or suburb on a completely empty plot with no neighbours in sight. But in the UK you, you can’t swing a cat without hitting an existing building, or actively worked farm.
Our planning system is literally designed to maximally empower NIMBYism. There are no well defined planning rules, or zoning, or planning process. Every council develops their own planning policy, and broadly has the power to block any project. The result is building anything requires millions of pounds, and years of effort, to work through a councils arbitrary, and ever changing planning rules, with no guarantee of any kind of success.
Most of the rest of the world operates some kind of permitted development zoning policy, where planning policy tends to provide clear rules around what can always be built in a specific area. So it possible to start a development process knowing that certain aspects of your project must be approved, as long as you follow the rules. Unlike the UK where you project might be approved if you managed to somehow follow all the undocumented, arbitrary, and changing local rules.
Consequences are quite simple, only projects that are absolutely guaranteed to return large profits if successful are built. And for those projects there’s very little incentive for high quality building, because there’s no competition in the area, and costs of getting permission are so high, that a developers unique selling point is their ability to get permission, not their ability to actually build well.
With regards to Grenfell, that’s the consequence of have shambolic building regulations (I.e. regulations on the quantity and safety of buildings), and a construction industry that can only make money by cutting corners, because the supply of actual work is so low.