Brownfield land owners advised to prepare for new legislation
The Government's recent announcement on further changes to the planning system to boost house building and streamline the planning process included the headline reference that brownfield land would automatically be granted planning permission for housing.
There has been little detail provided to date as to what this really means in practice. Some detail is contained in HM Treasury's document Fixing the Foundations and in respect to brownfield land the Government says it is clear on the need to promote the use of brownfield land and that it will remove all unnecessary obstacles to its redevelopment.
To this end, as well as legislating for statutory registers of brownfield land suitable for housing, the Government proposes to legislate to grant automatic permission in principle on brownfield sites identified on those registers, subject to the approval of a limited number of technical details.
On brownfield sites, this will give England a 'zonal' system, like those seen in many other countries, reducing unnecessary delay and uncertainty for brownfield development. There is also a suggestion that compulsory purchase powers may be used to assemble housing sites on brownfield land.
The definition of brownfield land is usually given as 'previously developed land which is, or was, occupied by a permanent structure (excluding agricultural and forestry buildings) and associated fixed surface infrastructure'.
Some local authorities may already have a register of brownfield sites and they will need to assess these sites to see if they are suitable for housing. Other local authorities or Local Enterprise Partnerships will need to produce a register of brownfield land suitable for housing. This could take some time.
In order to secure an automatic permission in principle, a limited number of technical details need to be approved but at this stage we are not sure what these will be.
We expect the legislation to be forthcoming in the autumn but in the meantime we are advising property owners with brownfield sites to have a chat with our planning team or their own planning adviser so that they can be prepared for any changes to legislation. We can ascertain if there is already a brownfield site register in the area and, if appropriate, we could promote land to be included in the register.
Although agricultural and forestry buildings are excluded in the proposals, such buildings that have been approved for other uses such as commercial, such as a farm shop or offices, would be considered as brownfield and hence possibly eligible for the relaxed rules.
By Graham Clark, planning consultant with Berrys
