Some councils are reported to be putting their local plans on hold after Boris Johnson suggested developers should build homes ‘not on green fields’ at the Conservative Party conference last month. His comment led some local authorities – including Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council in Hertfordshire – to put meetings to discuss its local plan on indefinite hold, using the Prime Minister’s words to justify doing so.
Adam Hesse, Aston Mead Land & Planning Director, commented: “Putting their plans on hold will prevent councils from having to make a decision about releasing greenbelt land and select brownfield sites instead. But to be frank, the government needs to look in its own backyard before beating developers with the brownfield stick. As some of the largest landowners in the country, local authorities have a wealth of untapped brownfield sites on their doorstep, if only they were prepared to let them go.”
But Adam Hesse says that some greenfield land will inevitably have to be built upon if the government is to hit its target of constructing 300,000 new homes every year.
He explains: “The truth is, even with this week’s news of £624m of government loan funding, brownfield sites are only half the story. After all, if building on brownfield land was so simple, every developer would already be doing it because planning permission in such cases is almost a given.
“However, town centre brownfield land is often either contaminated and too expensive to reclaim or already occupied by light industry who would have to be moved elsewhere. It’s no good saying we need more building on brownfield sites when they’re not readily available.
“Instead, councils would have to have a policy of building new light industrial units on land they own outside town centres, in order to relocate the companies concerned. This would certainly make much more sense than risking millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money buying shopping complexes hundreds of miles away outside their patch, which were often massively overpriced even before the Covid pandemic.
He adds: “In fact, if they had spent some of that commercial money on developing the land they own, they would have created a stack of affordable homes which they could have rented directly, rather than paying landlords to put up tenants and families who need accommodation.
“Such a policy would have the added advantage of moving existing businesses to new, modern buildings with greener credentials, and cut down on heavy lorries polluting town centres. However, there’s no getting away from it – this would mean building on the greenbelt.
Adam concludes: “But as we’ve said for years now, there is plenty of what we call ‘grubby greenbelt’ – land around railway lines and road junctions of no scenic value whatsoever - which might actually be improved by building on it.”
