About Brownfields: Governance and Policy

Brownfield Regeneration: Policies, Barriers and Drivers

The processes of brownfield redevelopment are governed by complex regulatory frameworks that can act as drivers and barriers to sustainable urban regeneration. These barriers and drivers are both legal and financial in nature. First, in order to tackle the financial barriers to brownfield redevelopment, a range of fiscal incentives have be made available by the government to private developers to encourage them to view brownfields as potentially profitable opportunities. These fiscal incentives have been backed-up by changes to the principles and practices underpinning the institutions of the British spatial planning system with a greater emphasis on increasing brownfield development at the expense of greenfield sites. In order to achieve this, the current government, through PPG3 Housing, has increased the targets for regional/local planning authorities to reach in respect to redeveloping brownfield land from 50% to 60%. (read PPG3 Housing here).

Alongside side this more directive approach, the government has identified areas of growth in areas such as the Thames Gateway and Milton Keynes where considerable brownfield and contaminated land exists alongside economic deprivation and housing shortages. In order to address this, it has given its main regeneration body, English Partnerships, a lead role in identifying and supporting development activities that will bring these sites back into productive use. In September 2003, English Partnerships published Towards a National Brownfield Strategy (2003; which can be accessed here). This report assessed the state of England’s brownfield land supply. The key message from the document is there is a great potential to meet government housing growth targets by recycling brownfield land, thus ensuring that greenfields and the wider countryside are protected. The findings, along with a series of recommendations, were the basis for the National Brownfield Strategy for England, which was outlined in the Sustainable Communities Plan (see below).

The redevelopment of brownfield land in areas like the Thames Gateway is at the heart of the current government’s agenda for tackling housing shortages in London and the South East and creating ‘sustainable communities’. In February 2003, the Labour government produced Sustainable Communities: Building for the Future which set out the government’s plans for tackling housing shortages in the South East and low demand in Northern areas. This plan reaffirmed the government’s commitment to using the planning system as a key instrument in delivering on brownfield regeneration. (Sustainable Communities: Building the Future can be found here).

In April 2003, HM Treasury commissioned a review, led by Kate Barker, into the factors behind the UK's lack of supply in the housing market. This review encompassed a range of issues affecting the house building industry, such as the role of competition, finance, capacity and technology. However the review also sought to examine how these issues interacted with the planning system and broader objectives of sustainable development. The final report, Delivering Stability: Securing our Future Housing Needs, was published in 2004 and recommended that central government should set out a goal for improved market affordability. It also suggested that additional investment will be required to deliver additional social housing to meet projected future needs. The report also recommended changes to the UK planning system such as the introduction of a Planning-gain Supplement to capture some of the development gains that landowners benefit from, and the establishment of a Regional Planning Executive to provide public advice to the Regional Planning Body on the scale and distribution of housing required to meet the market affordability target. In addition, it suggested that there needed to be greater flexibility at the local level through the allocation of additional land in Local Development Frameworks. The Barker Report can be accessed here.

Yet, while restricting the supply of greenfield land has made it harder for private developers to obtain planning permission for greenfield sites in areas where brownfield land is still an option for redevelopment, many developers still view greenfield sites as less risky and more profitable than brownfield sites, despite their increase in land values and the fiscal and regulatory hurdles placed by government.

Another driver - and at the same time a possible barrier - to brownfield regeneration, is the development in recent years within the UK of legislation with the aim of providing clearer regulation of contaminated. The current policy regime for dealing with contaminated land in the UK is geared towards operating along the grain of the development cycle by which the British planning system operates. It provides a clearer definition of the distinction between ‘brownfield land’ and ‘contaminated land’ and sets out a system regulating their remediation. In practice, the system offers considerable scope for discretion and flexibility to local actors to ensure that brownfield regeneration proceeds at a steady rate. However, the system, if operated rigidly, can impose significant costs upon developers, and the exchequer, posing a threat to the successful regeneration of economically unproductive areas as private developers push for more greenfield land on which to develop. The principal policy for regulating this is the Part IIa policy. (The Part IIa circular can be found here.)