UK Brownfield Market
'Strategic land investment in the UK is expected to generate immense opportunity'
UK planning policy; a revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), was updated on 19th February 2019 and sets out government's planning policies for England and how these are expected to be applied. The centre to the NPPF is Achieving Sustainable Development- 'meeting the needs of the present without compromising future generations, in a way that makes as much use as possible of previously developed or brownfield land.'
Despite increasing numbers of applications for development of Greenfield land, development policy is strongly in favour of brownfield applications.
The numbers of greenfield development proposals has increased from 2009-2018. Despite this increase, the vast majority of approvals (77%) were for brownfield residential applications.
Making effective use of brownfield land
Unlock land that is considered to have prohibitive constraints due to its brownfield nature.
In 2014, Government set a new goal for 90% of suitable brownfield sites to have planning permission by 2020. In 2017, a new regulation required councils to compile registers of contaminated land suitable for housing. Part 1 of the register lists all brownfield sites assessed as suitable and are deliverable in the next five years. Sites on Part 2 of the register are deemed to have Permission in Principle (PiP)- a new route to planning permission that is similar to an outline consent.
The CPRE however, indicates that the number of brownfield sites recorded by councils on registers is actually falling and that only 10 known developments have been granted accelerated planning permission on brownfield sites under new rules introduced in 2017.
Royal Town Planning Institutes noted that planning authorities have had extreme difficulty in compiling registers and keeping them up to date, so that their contents may not be reliable.
Through our teams knowledge working with Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 industrial companies we have extensive experience of identifying sites with opportunities for regeneration. Through our expertise in dealing with environmental challenges we obtain planning permissions and generate beneficial use for both investor and owner.
