Conclusion 152

A brownfield site is an area that has been used for development before. Such sites are usually in towns and cities and were previously used for industrial or commercial purposes; because of this, some are contaminated. The Minister told us that a focus on brownfield development is “a way of making sure that we meet our 300,000 homes per year target by 2025. We think it is a sensible target and we will focus on brownfield and provide the toolkits to local authorities to remediate brownfield sites”. 235 Analysis by the CRPE found that registers prepared by local planning authorities show that brownfield plots available and suitable for housing could provide over 1,061,000 homes. 236 A major problem, however, is that the availability of brownfield land does not map well onto housing affordability issues. As shown in Figure 11, less brownfield land tends to be available in unaffordable regions. Because of the costs of preparing sites for development, brownfield land is often more expensive to build on, which is not reflected in the market price of homes. These pressures can render some brownfield land unviable even when government support is available, and can make the planning and development process slower and more costly. Figure 11: Regional comparison of household projections and estimated housing capacity on brownfield sites Source: Lichfields, Brownfield Land Solution? https://lichfields.uk/media/1828/456376.pdf [accessed 19 November 2021]