Brownfield vs Greenfield Land: Why Not Develop Both?

With heated debates surrounding whether to develop on the green belt or brownfield land continuing to grow amongst planners, housebuilders and members of the public, Housing Industry Leaders ask the question: Why not both?

Decreasing the burden on the housing sector is at the forefront of policy decisions coming from the DLUHC. On top of this, think tanks such as the CPS, who released ‘The Case for Housebuilding’ supported by four former housing ministers, indicates the growing frustration in the sector.

Building more stock for private rent, ownership, and social housing is a threepronged approach that would tackle the housing crisis, ease spikes in rent and offer more of an opportunity for first-time buyers to enter the market, all stimulating growth on a regional and national level.

In order to do this, however, vast amounts of land is required to meet these housebuilding targets, something that has been disputed in communities across the UK. On one side of the fence, people believe there is enough brownfield land to fix the housing crisis and secure more housing stock for social housing and private ownership, the other side stipulates this to not be the case and argues the expansion of the greenbelt and building on greenfield land is a better use of space.

CPRE recommends utilising brownfield land only

The country side charity CPRE are firmly of the position that brownfield land provides sufficient area to build new homes and tackle the housing crisis. In their recent ‘State of Brownfield 2022’ report, they argued: “Harnessing the potential of brownfield land has multiple benefits if we remove the barriers to its development.”

This annual update from CPRE highlighted the current brownfield land capacity across regions in England and offered recommendations for increased use of our brownfield resource including: “Brownfield land continues to be a perpetually regenerating resource, with the current capacity now standing at 1.2 million new homes (up from 1.1 million in 2021 and 1.05 million in 2018).”

One of the core issues concerning brownfield land development is that a significant amount of land doesn’t have planning permission; this this improved from 2021, to 2022, it was by a

Looking more locally, totals are particularly low within regions needing levelling up, specifically the North West (33%), West Midlands (36%) and Yorkshire & The Humber (40%) regions. Individual local authorities with the highest brownfield capacity in terms of housing plots

Speeding up planning processes could have an increased impact on housebuilding in ‘levelling up hot spots’ but the same is argued about expanding green belts and developing

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The Case for Housebuilding report, written by CPS, a centre-right thinktank, explores the need to build on both brownfield and greenfield land. Raising issues with building solely on brownfield land: “Levels of brownfield land are insufficient. If they could all be built on immediately and at once, they would only provide a land supply for four or so years. There is also strong competition for brownfield land from business and industry.

Reduction in house build completions will impact generations to come

UK housebuilding for both social housing and private ownership has been reducing dramatically, most notedly through the Thatcher and Cameron era of the late 70’s and early 2010’s.

As a share of housing stock, the fall in new supply is even more dramatic – the sector was expanding housing stock by 18% per decade at our peak, but are now doing so by around 8%. This is despite accelerating population growth since the 1990s.

The Case for Housebuilding report stated: “Even if you look at figures for net additional supply, to take account of demolitions and conversions, you find that annual growth in the number of dwellings has roughly halved over the postwar period – again, despite accelerating population growth.”

In addition, the size of new homes has fallen. Post 2005, around 44% of newbuilds have been flats, versus just 18% pre-2005. Post 2005, 54% of homes have one or two bedrooms compared to 37% for older properties. The homes we are building are now the smallest in Europe. Between 1970 and 2021, house prices rose from £4,741 to £267,388. In real terms, that represented a 207% increase. This has been even more pronounced in some regions, particularly in recent years.

The state of the UK housing sector has seen the country freefall down the league tables compared to the rest of Europe. Sitting fourth from bottom among European countries in terms of home ownership rates, it has reversed nearly a century of clear progress toward greater ownership.

Fourth worst home ownership rates in Europe - greenfield allows the UK to climb back

The report argues building on brownfield and greenfield land will allow us to climb further up the leaderboards and offer an opportunity for younger people to get on the property ladder and provide more homes for social rent, reducing long waiting lists putting significant pressure on local authorities.

The rising cost of housing is also shown in rents. Whereas private renters spent 10% of their income on housing from the 1960s to the 1980s, rising to 15% in London, the share of income spent on rent has risen to 30% in recent years, and almost 40% in London.

The report wrapped up by explaining: “In addition, brownfield is not distributed evenly. Only in the North West could it meet 50% of projected need over the next 15 years. Most regions could not even meet 33% of projected need via brownfield.

Much brownfield may be in areas where new homes are unviable, or may require prohibitively expensive remediation. Cities like London and Bristol could build just 24% of the homes they need over the next 15 years on currently existing brownfield sites.

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