British Land and Landsec have joined forces to draw up a roadmap to drive growth across UK towns and cities by unlocking brownfield development sites.
In a paper titled `More growth, more homes, more jobs – how to reform the planning system to unlock urban regeneration’, the developers have called for a series of changes to be made to the planning system that will “not need primary legislation or significant public funding to help drive growth in towns and cities across the UK”.
British Land and Landsec said the current planning system is hindering economic growth in the UK and development on brownfield land in key urban locations is increasingly needed to “drive investment and growth and build communities for future generations”.
In the paper, British Land and Landsec argue that successive changes to the planning system have resulted in layers of complexity, which mean the system’s default mode is to prevent or delay economic activity. This in turn had added to the burden on local authority planning departments.
The developers propose making the following changes to the existing planning system:
Define brownfield urban regeneration sites as a separate planning category and focus on these opportunities to drive economic growth;
Secure quick wins and pilot new ways of working in progressive authorities;
Resource the planning system more effectively and reduce complexity and duplication to improve performance, with centralised specialist planning resource too support the delivery of large, complex sites;
Encourage proportionate decision-making to ensure that planning decisions are taken at the level their impacts are felt;
Recognise the bespoke nature and viability challenges of urban regeneration;
Create tax incentives to unlock investment in infrastructure and remediation of brownfield land;
Place communities at the heart of reshaping urban spaces.
Simon Carter, chief executive officer at British Land, said: “There is political consensus in the need to prioritise urban regeneration over greenfield development. The ideas we are recommending today would help to drive our country’s growth by rejuvenating our great cities and towns and can be put into place quickly and easily.”
Mark Allan, chief executive officer at Landsec, added: “Urban, brownfield regeneration has the potential to unlock growth and prosperity for cities across the UK. However, the current planning system acts as a significant brake to this growth. We believe that by making some necessary but simple changes to the existing planning regime, we can unlock this opportunity – for the benefit of the UK, for the economy and importantly for the communities we build for.”
