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England has enough brownfield land for one million homes, research finds

England has enough derelict or vacant land to build more than one million new homes – two-thirds of which are ready to start immediately, new research has found.

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Picture: Getty
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England has enough brownfield land for one million homes, research finds #ukhousing

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), which champions brownfield development over building on the green belt, said using existing sites helps to regenerate towns and cities and provides new homes in high-demand areas.

The group’s analysis found that there is space on suitable brownfield sites for more than one million homes, two-thirds of which are ‘shovel ready’, meaning they could be delivered within the next five years.

Prioritising this land would not only help transform run-down areas and provide more homes, but also prevent the loss of countryside and green spaces, the campaign group said.


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However, it warned that councils are underestimating the number of homes that could be built on these sites because the definition of brownfield land is too narrow, or the density of planned homes is not as high as it could be.

Brownfield land registers, which are put together by councils, only count ‘previously developed land’ which means that a large number of sites are currently being missed, CPRE warned.

For example, in the London Borough of Enfield, CPRE found that there was space for at least 37,000 homes on a wide range of types of brownfield land. This is compared with just 2,170 homes identified on Enfield’s most recently published register of brownfield land, which was produced in December 2017.

Rebecca Pullinger, planning campaigner at CPRE, said: “Building on brownfield land presents a fantastic opportunity to simultaneously remove local eyesores and breathe new life into areas crying out for regeneration.

“It will help to limit the amount of countryside lost to development, and build more homes in areas where people want to live, with infrastructure, amenities and services already in place.”

The CPRE also found that many areas across England with high housing need also have a large amount of brownfield land ready for redevelopment. London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield have identified land available for regeneration that would provide almost half a million homes.

To make best use of suitable brownfield land, the government should introduce a genuine ‘brownfield-first’ policy, which ensures that suitable previously developed or underused land is prioritised for redevelopment over green spaces and countryside, the CPRE said.

It added that the registers needed to act as a “true pipeline” for land for homes, as well as protecting the biodiversity or heritage value of sites where necessary.

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