Building high-density housing on brownfield land

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.” 

The private sector can play a bigger role in getting planning applications moving through the system, agrees Angela Brockbank, affordable homes sector director at Galliford Try. “We have councils sitting on big tracts of land that we could be developing, but the councils don’t have the resources and skills to enable that,” she says. “[Councils should] be able to use the expertise that’s in the private sector to help them do that, and to engage with us more quickly to allow that to happen.”

It’s not just the planning system that impedes brownfield development. The Building Safety Act 2022, drawn up in response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017, has resulted in unintended consequences for urban development, such as curtailing the housing sector’s development ability. 

“Housing associations in London have real issues about capacity,” says Vicky Savage, executive group director, development and sales at L&Q. Funding has been diverted from development to existing stock, she adds; the G15 group of large London associations, for example, is set to spend £3.6bn on building safety over the next decade.

Many housing associations in the capital have reduced their development teams, Ms Savage says, and this will have a knock-on effect on future skills capacity. That capacity is already well below what it needs to be, argues Mr Calvert, who cites a need for resourcing planning teams more effectively across the country.

He adds that the government is taking steps to address this. “The MHCLG [Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government] Local Authority Planning Capacity and Skills Survey published at the start of the year, highlighted masterplanning, viability, biodiversity net gain – all the areas we need to improve upon as an industry,” he says.

The Building Safety Act definition of ‘higher-risk buildings’ (those at least 18 metres in height, or with at least seven storeys) has also affected the density of housing built on brownfield land.

“The reason [this rule] was set up has to be respected, and the additional levels of scrutiny that [it] will give to the quality of workmanship, the quality of materials, is very important, but it is having a knock-on impact,” says David Magill, associate architect at Levitt Bernstein. “We’ve got clients who are registered providers who, as part of the initial brief, are saying, [we must] be able to comply with being a non-high-risk building… So we’re going up to five or six storeys in some locations where the council has said we’d be perfectly happy for you to go taller than this.”

There is no way the primary legislation around this issue is going to be changed, says Mike De’Ath, partner at HTA Design – but there is still a way forward. 

“What can we do to be helpful to the government and respectful to Grenfell and all the people that we wish to house?” he asks. “What can we do in a positive way, in collaboration that drives forward housing delivery?” 

Rethink approaches

Other factors hampering brownfield development are common physical challenges and their associated costs. The low-hanging fruit has now gone, says Chaminda Pathirage, professor of brownfield research and innovation at the University of Wolverhampton. His department is trialling technologies that could help unlock complex sites, such as quantum sensors that can scan deep below the ground to give developers a detailed picture of subterranean obstacles without the need for exploratory digging. “We’re also looking at how we can upskill and reskill the workforce going forward to [use] this new technology,” Mr Pathirage adds.