‘The right homes in the right places,’ seems an innocuous, inoffensive phrase.
It straddles tense discussions about a broken housing market that’s weaponised and misunderstood in equal measure.
The Prime Minister deployed the term in the government’s latest pledge to ‘turbo-charge’ housebuilding by streamlining planning for development sites in towns and cities across England.
Although all that’s happening at this stage is another consultation (which I will return to), the statement led the news on Tuesday.
It taps into what some see as a dividing line between the government’s focus on previously developed – or ‘brownfield’ – land and Labour’s recent commitment to develop new towns. As the election draws nearer, it’s likely to spark heated debate.
I’ve been fortunate to lead comms on major urban developments in Bristol, Manchester and Gloucester. The sites are invariably complex and take time (and funding) to tackle. It’s vitally important work. Those who succeed make a visible difference to places. They deserve support to get it right.
Of course, it’s right for any serious government to look at how brownfield sites can provide the right homes in the right places. To that end, it wants feedback on proposals to:
- Change national planning rules to prioritise building as many homes as possible on brownfield sites.
- Alter housing targets in 20 large towns and cities. This would set a lower bar for approving housing projects to maintain building rates above 95% of the target level.
- Look at changing the threshold for when the Mayor of London needs to review housing applications.
I’ve responded to the consultation. While I am broadly supportive of the proposals, it raised several questions in my mind about delivery and the quality and clarity of information provided through the consultation.
Questions on brownfield
#1 What’s the cost?
Redeveloping brownfield sites is complex and costly. There is funding available from Homes England for sites. But reforming planning won’t be enough to provide new communities on sites across the country. It also takes political will, patience and several billions of pounds in capital investment. The consultation material doesn’t acknowledge this.
#2 How can planning teams deliver?
Anyone following planning knows that local authority teams are at breaking point. While it’s a source of concern within industry and business media, this hasn’t gained national attention. The latest ‘turbocharging’ announcement is part of a pattern of press releases, breathlessly announcing new powers for stretched councils and urging them to act. If only things were that easy. Many councils stand at a cliff edge financially, facing huge funding gaps created by rising costs and falling budgets. Fast-tracking brownfield development puts more pressure on already strained local council planning departments.
#3 Which towns and cities?
The announcement refers to 20 of England’s largest cities and towns, but does not name them. Alongside unexplained jargon like Housing Delivery Test, this assumes a degree of knowledge about the proposals. Where turbocharged housing happens is important to those who live and work in those places. It may be obvious to many, but it’s still surprising that this isn’t included in the consultation material. The 20 places covered by this include: Birmingham, Bradford, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Coventry, Derby, Kingston upon Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Plymouth, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Wolverhampton (h/t Local Government Chronicle).
#4 How many homes would this provide?
Challenges aside, the consultation makes no mention of how many homes this policy could provide. Housebuilding rates are already considerably short of the government’s pledge to provide 300,000 a year by the middle of this decade. Even if this proposal helped to provide homes on all brownfield sites in towns and cities, would this be enough? Studies conclude that it won’t. This raises a final fundamental question about our dysfunctional housing system.
#5 Why is this not part of a wider discussion?
Right homes, right places. As long as it’s brownfield, and nowhere else. Cities and towns can play a vital role in providing homes in sustainable locations. But focusing squarely on brownfield seems narrow when we need a holistic discussion about how we can provide the homes needed. For a government hemmed in by backbenchers representing constituencies in the South East where the housing affordability crisis is most pronounced, this seems a bridge too far this side of the election.
Meeting the housing challenge
Any move to simplify the arduous process of providing homes on previously developed land in towns and cities deserves support. That’s because we face a huge challenge.
Everyone deserves a decent home, but the UK misses its own housebuilding targets by tens of thousands every year. This makes affordable housing vanishingly out of reach for increasing numbers of people. Average prices in many of the ‘top 20’ cities covered by this consultation are more than 10 times income levels for those places. I’m hearing stories of renters in Bristol paying more than £1,000 a month for a room in a shared house.
The reality is that it needs sustained and radical measures to fix the problem. Instead, we get announcements masquerading as ‘action’ and tinkering at the edges. The government appears to have held loads of consultations on housing policy since 2010. More than half of these are about planning and building.
We don’t need another consultation just months before the end of this Parliament to tell us what what we already know about things like where ‘barriers to delivery’ exist.
We already know, for example, that brownfield sites are complex. They require legal and technical expertise and a fair bit of funding to develop.
It’s clear that local authority planning teams are under-resourced and face a backlog of applications.
And we know that even if every available brownfield site took its share of homes, we’d still need to build more elsewhere. That’s what makes the ‘debate’ about whether the country needs to focus on brownfield or greenfield development so ridiculous. The uncomfortable truth is that we need to consider both options, and others. And we need to put huge collective effort into doing this sustainably and well.
Any local or national politician who addresses this challenge deserves to be in office for a very long time.
The latest announcement makes a modest attempt at framing the terms of the discussion. After 14 years and countless counsultations, it doesn’t do justice to the scale of the challenge confronting us.
The consultation runs until 26 March.
If you’re affected by or interested in the issues in this piece, I’d love to hear your thoughts about them.