The best laid plans

The government is intent on speeding up housebuilding and it has the planning system in its sights.

While the parts of the Housing and Planning Bill relating to Starter Homes, Pay to Stay and high-value empty council houses have generated many column inches, there are also dramatic changes to the planning system tucked into this huge bill.

The government wants to speed up the planning process so developers can get building, and council planning departments are seen as the weak link.

With this in mind, the government announced a pilot of brownfield land registers in March, and 73 councils are setting up the registers in their area, helped by £10,000 of government funding.

Registered sites

Sites included in the brownfield registers will be given ‘permission in principle’, which means the core principles of the development, such as land use and amount of development, are pre-approved.

Permission in principle would be given to sites identified in Local Plans, neighbourhood plans and brownfield registers.

Inside Housing wanted to get councils’ thoughts on whether the registers will speed up development and how permission in principle could contribute to this aim.

Baroness Susan Williams of Trafford, a junior minister at the Department for Communities and Local Government, certainly thinks they will deliver. In a House of Lords debate last week, she said there is concern “about the lack of upfront certainty in the current planning system”.

Baroness Williams told peers there are “issues around the cost of submitting outline and full applications without confirmation of the acceptability of the principles between plan-making and planning application stage.

“Permission in principle seeks to respond to these concerns by making the planning process more certain and more efficient. It will help provide a way for small builders to enter the market and for locally supported plan development to get under way faster.”

Many of the councils we spoke to are in the early stages of setting up their registers, but some information is starting to emerge. They have identified sites and are about to consult with the public and interested parties, such as developers, on the sites that are proposed for the brownfield register.

Labour-led Wigan Council has had to separate sites that have elements of both brownfield and greenfield land, particularly in areas where mining took place. Despite this complication, Mike Worden, assistant director for planning and transport at the council, said the pilot is “going well”.

Stuart Timmiss, head of planning and assets at Labour-led Durham County Council, said an initial analysis of brownfield land in the area suggests there could be up to 60 sites on the register and it will be up and running “later in the summer”.

A spokesperson for Conservative-led Medway Council said the council is “pleased” to be trialling the brownfield register because it “allows us to more easily utilise underused land, making way for thousands of new homes to keep up with the demand of the growing population”.

However, others are not so confident.

One senior local authority housing figure, who asked not to be named,  says: “[The brownfield register] isn’t going to address the problem of financial viability. Just because we put a site on a register isn’t going to make it work. What’s the long term purpose of the register in relation to funding? It isn’t clear yet.

“We will have a brownfield register but it will still be associated with all the problems that we currently have with brownfield sites and lack of value on the end product,” he adds.

Frank Hont, Labour cabinet member for housing at Liverpool City Council, has reservations about the “confusion” such registers could cause in the community.

“Getting agreement for housing in principle when there’s no clear plan will just create confusion in the community. We think the registers will become contentious with local communities”, he adds.

Mr Hont says when the council published some of its early thinking on its Local Plan, it included a list of greenfield sites. Residents assumed the council was planning to build on all those sites, and there was pushback on this.

“There’s a similarity with brownfield sites; you start identifying them and talking about them and you raise objections from people before anything happens,” he adds.

Mr Hont says it is an “oversimplification that just by producing these lists it’s going to make things easier”.

Stumbling block

Lambeth Council says the brownfield register proposal will lead to “consultation fatigue and confusion in communities” because residents will have to be consulted on an annual basis over local plans, neighbourhood plans and brownfield registers.

Council plans for brownfield sites could hit a stumbling block if they are restricted to housing-led development. In the House of Lords last week, peers voted through an amendment that would require all sites with permission in principle to be housing-led.

Baroness Williams asked peers to withdraw the amendment and promised the government would specify sites should be housing-led in secondary legislation. Peers were unconvinced and the amendment was pushed to a vote. The amendment was passed by 213 votes to 171.

However, councils have cautioned against requiring all sites in brownfield registers to be housing-led.

This could cause problems for areas of the country where developers are not jostling to build housing developments.

Richard Welch, planning policy officer at Selby District Council, said northern authorities can struggle to get developer interest for every brownfield site.

Selby District Council is piloting the brownfield register and is about to consult with residents and developers. However, Mr Welch said he does not expect all the sites in the register to be designated for housing because the demand is not always there.

He says: “We can put these brownfield sites in the register but it’s another matter if developers see them as viable and want to build on them.”

Another local government figure says:  “As a general principle we like to retain flexibility around planning.

“Unlike the government’s view of planning in local authorities, we have a very positive attitude to development. We prefer to work on planning briefs and then work with the developers to develop the planning approval, rather than say ‘yes we’ve given that planning approval for a particular use’ and then find the market dictates what the use is and not us. Anything that hampers our ability to be flexible on planning is not particularly welcome.”

The government has not yet defined what they mean by “housing-led”.

Mr Welch said it was “critical” for councils to have the power to decide how many homes should be built on a permission in principle site and the density of homes.

The National Housing Federation has been pushing for councils to have this control over decision-making for its sites. The NHF has also called for brownfield registers to be widened to include all sites suitable for housing in order to speed up house building.

The unnamed senior local authority figure says one risk of a brownfield register is it can lead to a rush for development rather than a coherent strategy to fit the wider area.

He says: “Once we start making announcements about what we intend to do on our sites, it sets off a flurry of speculation and brings it about in a pretty unplanned way.”

It is early days for the pilots but the results could go some way to helping solve the ultimate planning dispute - who is responsible for delays in development; planners or developers? The answer may not be as clear-cut as some hope.