Housing shortage special: Interview with Kevin Gibbs, Partner at Bond Dickinson Part 1

A recent report ‘Housing – Nationally Significant Infrastructure’ by law from Bond Dickinson and planning consultants, Quod, urged the government to consult on the feasibility of bringing housing within the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) regime in a effort to help tackle the housing shortage.

UK Construction Media spoke to Kevin Gibbs, partner at Bond Dickinson about the report’s finding and the housing shortage.

From Bond Dickinson’s point of view, what effect is the housing shortage having?

We are able to see just how slow it can be for schemes to come through the planning system. This can be for all sorts of reasons: land acquisition problems in terms of land assembly, particular planning provisions or a range of other things. There is then the issue of consultations and political dimensions going through local authorities.

You’ve also got the technical issues dealing with things like infrastructure levies, planning agreements, and infrastructure agreements to be put in place.

On the larger schemes it does take an awfully long time between inception and obtaining planning consent, then afterwards dealing with issues in terms of easements. So you can see why the planning system is under a big strain.

Whether it’s developers, local authorities, partnerships, investment funds, everyone has to do as much as they can to resolve some of these issues because we are not really providing the homes that are needed, particularly for young people in terms of quantities, quality and sustainability of developments and that is causing economic and other problems.

Tell us about the current planning system.

There’s always lots of change. We’ve had the National Planning Policy Framework in place since 2012, which was a big change from the previous system which was all about regional strategies.

As with any change there is a period of adjustment, even with the NPPF, which had within it principles of a presumption in favour of sustainable developments, requirement for five year land supplies, and, critically for local authorities, a system to put their plans in place on a basis of objectively assessed needs of housing.

The objectively assessed needs hasn’t changed because that is an effective way in which you can look at your current population demographics, immigration, and the employment or economic prospects for your housing market area. This allows you to predict what sort of housing you will need.

Strategic Housing Market Assessments are required to be done across the country by local authorities – some are being done well, some not so well but the thing is you can assess that. For example, you can determine that you will need 200,000 dwellings or whatever in a particular housing market area. You then need to put the plan in place to allocate the areas within the local authority or combination of local authority areas.

If you look at the reports they show the number of local plans that have adopted since 2012 is 25%; it’s clear there is a major stalling process.

You can see the arguments in local authority areas in terms of people not wanting to accept necessarily those areas that may be under consideration. This means that those local plans are taking a long time. The plans are in place and maybe we should be getting delivery through the local planning system but we’re not.

What are your thoughts on the government’s plans with brownfield sites?

Yes, having a registry of brownfield sites is a good idea. However, I think you’ll find having a register and potentially requiring local authorities to dispose of those assets, may show many of the brownfield sites that could be potentially be used for housing are already under consideration.

For example, BAE systems had owned Filton airfield as part of its aerospace engineering business. In 2012, it was decided for economic reasons that there was no longer a need for the airfield.

That piece of land immediately went through the local planning system and is now allocated for housing and employment. So where there are sites and factories coming up, I think you’ll find within a local market area that these sites have been looked at. For instance, it maybe brownfield land where there isn’t actually a housing need, so that’s another permutation.

The report shows where population is growing and where the annual growth is at its lowest ebb. You may find there will be brownfield sites of potential but might they might not be in the right areas.

So, yes the brownfield sites will be of some assistance but as I said, there will still be the planning process to go through and the deliveries are taking a long time for schemes.

Look out for the second part of the interview where Kevin Gibb discusses the need for NSIP to be applied to housing developments.

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