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Is building on brownfield the answer to the housing crisis? Successive governments have certainly touted it as a big part of the solution.
In February 2024, the previous Conservative administration promised to “turbocharge” housebuilding by instructing councils to prioritise brownfield development. The Labour government, meanwhile, made a similar promise just a few months after taking office in October, with housing minister Matthew Pennycook pledging a “brownfield-first approach” to planning and development to tackle housing shortages, while revitalising urban areas.
A 2019 report by the National Housing Federation found that brownfield sites in England alone have capacity for more than a million new homes – a huge chunk of the government’s 1.5 million homes target.
Yet building those homes is not quite as straightforward as the numbers and noises from the government might suggest. From remediation to planning delays, developers face a range of obstacles when regenerating derelict sites. Inside Housing – in association with developer Galliford Try – brought together a panel of experts to discuss these challenges and how they might be overcome.
There is a general consensus around the table that the government is making the right noises about brownfield development. Some of the government’s many proposed planning reforms are aimed squarely at unlocking these sites; its ‘brownfield passports’ proposal, for example, aims to expedite planning approval. But what do planners themselves think?
“We support the intent of the brownfield passport, but we’re a little lukewarm on how that might be applied,” says Robbie Calvert, head of policy and public affairs at the Royal Town Planning Institute. “From our perspective, the local plan should be the key mechanism for setting out a strategy to allocate appropriate development on brownfield sites.”
Too much focus on policy, however, can obscure what for some is the greater problem. “There has been, understandably, an obsession with planning,” says Neil Jefferson, chief executive of the Home Builders Federation. “But in terms of our members, it’s planning delays which are the issue, not necessarily planning policy. These days planning policy is taking second place to capacity within the planning system.”
Mr Calvert agrees. “You can reform a planning system until you’re blue in the face, but unless you resource it effectively, it’s not going to achieve your intended outcomes,” he says. “How are we going to deal with a deluge of consents that are required to meet [the government’s growth] agenda?”
Jane Barnett, director of planning at Savills, says delays have become a common feature of planning applications. “It’s quite a big point for developers if they have put in quite a substantial application with a lot of paperwork, and there’s a significant delay on validation – because then the clock hasn’t started on the statutory consultation,” she says.
Capacity issues
One answer, Ms Barnett suggests, could be for planning departments to lean more into outside expertise, where possible. “I don’t think local authorities should be worried about bringing in external advisors when they need to… and bringing them in a lot earlier so we can get that input and have a dialogue,” she says. “Planning officers do great jobs, but you can’t expect them to understand the nitty gritty of a viability assessment
or retail impact assessment, or whatever it is.”