Brownfield Registers – will they speed up house building?

It is the Government’s intention to implement the ‘permission in principle’ measure set out in the Housing and Planning Bill to speed up housing-led development on sites listed on the new brownfield registers.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                         They claim that this will enable developers to have a greater degree of certainty in relation to location, use and the amount of development that is acceptable. However, from experience these issues are only the tip of the iceberg. Land contamination, access, impact on highway safety, design and ecology are only a few examples of the stumbling blocks that developers face on a regular basis that either prohibit the development of housing or at the very least set the development back months if not years – not to mention the added cost of extensive reports, surveys and potentially appeal work.