Thousands Of New Homes Set To Be Built On Brownfield Land

Thousands Of New Homes Set To Be Built On Brownfield Land

Up to 5,600 homes are set to be built on underused land in an attempt to help construct affordable housing and regenerate local areas that have become derelict, according to a new government initiative.

The government has allocated £57.8m from a £75m Brownfield Land Release fund to transform derelict and disused industrial buildings and garages into new communities, according to a Gov UK press release.

The money has been allocated to 53 councils, including several in Yorkshire, in order to pay for builders and scaffolders in Leeds to take previously developed land and to transform it.

Across the country, the funding will be used to support up to 17,000 construction jobs and the government’s aim is to build up to 300,000 new homes a year by 2025, helping to stymie a housing market with the hottest ever competition to buy.

As well as this, £5m has been allocated to self and custom-build projects, which would allow local people the opportunity to craft their own homes on brownfield land as well.

What Is Brownfield Land?

In the world of urban planning and development there are generally three categories of land that can be built on:

  • Greenfield land, or land that has not been developed on and thus lacks the constraints caused by a need to work with infrastructure that already exists.
  • Greyfield land, a relatively new term to describe underused existing buildings and land in urban areas that could be inexpensively redeveloped (usually by adding rooftop developments).
  • Brownfield land, which is any previously developed land that is not in use.

The term is somewhat complex and is often confused with the term previously developed land (PDL), which is also referred to in the government’s press release.

In a planning policy guidance document from 2012, brownfield land was described as the land that is/was formerly the site of a permanent building and the surrounding land.

Whilst brownfield can simply mean previously developed land that is now derelict, it has a range of implications, the most concerning of which is the potential for contamination.

The reason for this is many brownfield developments are former manufacturing plants, factories and refineries that have been long closed, vacated and lay derelict over the years.

This is especially true for a number of northern cities, such as Manchester, Leeds and Preston, where dormant factories, warehouses and paper mills are very common and whole regions are seen as brownfield developments.

The complication for many developers who may want to build on the 28,000 hectares of land is that former industrial land potentially has contamination, either through fuel spillages, solvents, the existence of heavy metals in the soil formerly used for industrial processes, asbestos and other concerns.

However, the cost of analysing and cleaning up this land can be offset by the potential gains in selling new affordable housing, especially in areas where the green belt (the conservation land around cities) is in danger of being built on.

In the North West especially, there is enough brownfield land to meet the demand for housing for over a decade.

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