Andy Burnham’s proposed council housebuilding programme risks becoming a “postcode lottery” because of a shortage of publicly owned land in areas with the greatest housing need, Together has warned.
Analysis commissioned by the specialist lender suggests publicly owned brownfield land in England has capacity for between 187,000 and 207,000 homes.
This would be less than two-thirds of the 300,000 social and affordable homes previously proposed by Labour – even before the suitability and deliverability of individual sites are considered.
Together says at least a third of the land needed would therefore have to be acquired at market value, creating a need for acquisition and development finance capable of supporting SME housebuilders on complex brownfield sites.
REGIONAL DIFFERENCES
The analysis, based on data provided by property intelligence platform Searchland, found that existing public land is also heavily concentrated in a small number of local authority areas.
Birmingham has the largest identified supply, with 185 sites capable of accommodating around 11,500 homes. However, around two-thirds of the 20 areas with the most significant housing delivery shortfalls have little or no substantial public land available.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole recorded the largest shortfall among those areas, at approximately 4,550 homes, followed by Greenwich at 3,880, Newham at 2,870 and Leicester at 2,280.
None of the 10 authorities with the largest identified delivery shortfalls featured among the 20 councils with the greatest supply of public land.
Together says only Birmingham, Bristol, Bradford, Lewisham and Kirklees combined a serious housing deficit with a substantial public-land holding.
“There isn’t enough public land to deliver a programme this size.”
Ryan Etchells (main picture), chief commercial officer at Together, says: “Building on vacant public land is a sensible idea, but our analysis shows it can only ever be part of the answer.
“There isn’t enough public land to deliver a programme this size, and that’s before considering that the places with the greatest need tend to have the least land. As it stands, whether this pledge reaches your community is close to a postcode lottery.
“The areas falling furthest behind won’t be rescued by land the state happens to own. They need sites to be assembled and bought, existing land intensified, and the wider public estate brought into play – and all of that needs finance that moves quickly and understands complex, non-standard sites. That is precisely the gap specialist lenders like Together exist to fill.
“If the ambition is genuinely national, the plan has to look well beyond vacant public land, otherwise many of the families on today’s waiting lists will be left exactly where they are.”
Many of the publicly owned sites are expected to be small, dispersed brownfield plots capable of supporting between one and 50 homes. Together says these sites are more likely to be developed by SME builders and regional contractors than volume housebuilders.
Such schemes can involve contamination and remediation work, access difficulties, ransom strips, non-standard construction, phased development and planning risk. SME developers may also need short-term acquisition funding to assemble adjoining plots before applying for longer-term development finance.
BOOST HOUSING SUPPLY
Etchells adds: “Making more public land available is an important part of boosting housing supply, but land alone doesn’t build homes.
“Developers need access to funding that can keep pace with the realities of a project, whether that’s navigating planning delays, drawing down finance in stages or moving quickly when a site becomes available.
“In many high-demand areas, developers also need acquisition finance to bring sites together before a scheme can get off the ground.
“These are often complex opportunities that don’t fit a standard lending model, which is why specialist lenders have such an important role to play. If the funding isn’t there, even the most promising sites can struggle to move from allocation to construction.”
