House building helped by land recovery programme

Major brownfield sites in the Midlands are being brought into productive use by design and build projects large enough to call on the resources of several house building companies.

House builders in the United Kingdom have for many years been frustrated by the failure of the planning authorities to release sites for development at the time they are needed.

Not only that, many sites have been barred from development by all kinds of obstacles to access.

English Partnerships estimate that some 12,800 hectares (about 30,000 acres) of derelict land, mostly in the North of England, have been held out of use in recent years owing to contamination and the high cost of regenerating them in areas where values are low.

At densities up to 40 dwellings per hectare, these neglected locations would make a useful contribution not only to housing supply but to cleaning up the environment.

Including a large number of smaller sites not so badly affected by dereliction, the area of land now being drawn into the house building programme could rise still further.

So it must be a positive development that a group of companies which have been working with English Partnerships on recovery of brownfield land are getting an opportunity for practical investigation of these latent opportunities.

With ingenuity and a little help with funding, many of these sites could be released from their sterile state.

Now we learn that major brownfield sites in the Midlands are being brought into productive use by design and build projects large enough to call on the resources of several house building companies.

Developments of this kind must be heartening for the industry.

They demonstrate clearly what Kate Barker said in her report, that difficulties in gaining access to sites are the principal constraint on housing supply.

But recent events show that there is no lack of response in the house building industry once promising opportunities present themselves.

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