Brownfield is best

But now there was a problem. Without councils recording suitable brownfield land, nobody knew how much was available. It provided a perfect excuse for developers to say there wasn’t land available. To put ‘brownfield first’, councils needed to know what brownfield land they had that was suitable for housing.

So, in 2014, CPRE decided to find out.

Our Waste of Space campaign had a two-pronged approach. We used our social media channels to crowd-source brownfield sites that could be used for housing. At the same time, we commissioned researchers from the University of the West of England to analyse all the most recent data on brownfield and extrapolate that to give a national picture.

Four hundred of our supporters responded to our call for details and photos of suitable brownfield land for housing.  The region with the highest number of submissions was the south east (119 sites, not including 35 in London), followed by the West Midlands (73) and the south west (66). Most popular sorts of sites nominated included derelict sites (148) and former factories/industrial sites (56).

The researchers’ results were even more spectacular. Their extrapolation from the data they uncovered suggested that England had enough brownfield land for at least 976,000 homes.

They also suggested that brownfield is not a finite resource. In other words, more brownfield land tends to become available as other brownfield is used – it's recyclable.

The government told us our estimate was ‘wildly optimistic’.

With the new evidence, we set about lobbying ministers, MPs and explaining our work to civil servants. They started showing an interest: the No 10 Policy Unit asked to see what sites were on our crowd-sourced list.

In March the following year we published the policy paper Better brownfield suggesting that large scale brownfield sites require a comprehensive approach to development - and European experience could show us the way. It also looked at small-scale brownfield sites in England, finding that a register of these sites together with a flexible approach to space standards could make the most of their potential.

A commitment to brownfield land appeared in Conservative and Liberal Democrat manifestos for the 2015 elections.

We were pleased to see our work on Waste of Space recognised by our peers by being shortlisted for the environment campaign section of the Charity Awards. But there was more to do to make brownfield first a reality.

Thanks to the political momentum from the election, the new government set up a pilot project with a few councils to see what sort of figures they came up with when asked to register brownfield land suitable for housing.

In March 2016 we had more good news: CPRE research commissioned from planning consultants, Glenigan, revealed that brownfield sites are on average built out more than six months quicker than greenfield once they have planning permission. Small brownfield sites are particularly important in countryside areas: they are key to increasing the supply of new housing and can play an important role in maintaining the vitality of rural communities.

And in November 2016 we were delighted to find out that when we analysed the pilot projects data, it suggested our researchers’ original calculations were on point: suitable brownfield sites across England could provide at least 1.1 million new homes.

The government had described our estimate of around 1 million homes as ‘wildly over optimistic’. Now, using the government’s own pilot scheme results, we could see the results on the ground. Looking at the data of the 53 councils involved in the pilot project, we found that these areas alone could provide 273,000 homes.

Spring 2017 saw the move we’d been pushing for: the government published regulations requiring all planning authorities to publish a register of brownfield land by the end of the 2017. 

By the end of the year, more than 95% of local planning authorities in England had published their surveys of available brownfield land, and we had the chance to look at the pilot registers. By extrapolating the results, we were reassured to see that they suggested our figure was a lot more realistic than the government’s 200,000.

Our analysis revealed that local planning authorities had identified brownfield land with space for more than 1 million homes, and that, importantly, there was brownfield land in places where people wanted to live.

If this land is used more efficiently, the sites could deliver even more homes, closer to 1.4 million – preventing the unnecessary loss of countryside and green spaces.

In early 2018 we finally had the chance to analyse councils’ brownfield registers in full – and guess what? CPRE was right all along.

The published registers showed suitable brownfield sites, as identified by local councils, for more than one million homes. Much of this capacity was ready to start building. It was even feasible for two-thirds of those homes to be delivered over the following five years, representing 60% of official figures for housing need at that time.