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Housing associations ‘require 138,000 more plots of land’
Housing associations need to buy a further 138,000 plots of land if they are to meet their target to ramp up the delivery of new homes, consultancy Savills has said.
In a report shared exclusively with Inside Housing, it found that the top 50 largest builders in the sector need to secure the plots of land.
This is necessary, Savills said, if the top 50 are to deliver their ambition – as revealed by Inside Housing’s Top 50 Biggest Builders survey – of delivering 50% more homes over the next five years, or 250,000 homes between them.
This will entail a rise of up to 53,000 homes per year from the current output of 35,000 homes annually.
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The report found that the associations need to secure around 4,000 plots to deliver the homes expected in the next year, and a further 27,000-37,000 plots per year over the next four years.
It said the sector was increasingly turning to “strategic land” – which does not have planning permission.
It said: “Demand for land is not just from the house builders. Housing associations are planning to build increasing numbers of homes with less reliance on Section 106 and therefore require more land.
“Housing associations are also turning to strategic land (land without planning permission) to take a longer-term stake in their land pipelines. In our annual survey of housing associations (The Savills Housing Sector Survey 2018), we found 26% of those who didn’t own strategic land were looking to acquire this type of land in 2018, double that of last year.”
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In the same report, Savills noted that the supply of land with planning permission is growing, keeping land values from increasing.
In 2017, it said, 391,000 homes were granted planning permission in Britain, up 21% on 2016.
Greenfield land values in the UK went up by 0.8% in the second quarter of 2018. Urban land values, meanwhile, stayed constant in that quarter, making for a significant decrease on the growth of 4% in the first quarter of 2018.
In parts of the Midlands and Scotland, however, land values did grow somewhat. Greenfield values in the East, West and Scotland increased by 1.6%, 0.9% and 1.3% respectively.
Homes England, the report said, plans to dispose of 127 residential sites over the next year. Of these, 29% have detailed planning consent and 30% are not yet allocated or proposed to be allocated in a local plan.
