The Brownfield Passport
Party conferences are typically policy-light affairs. This is no bad thing. When policy announcements are made at party conferences they often fall apart quickly – remember Network North? Labour’s first conference was no different, but there was one big re-announcement: a passport for brownfield development. If implemented correctly – a big ‘if’ – it could be very powerful indeed.
There is no better way to boost the UK’s growth rate, or for that matter to cut emissions, than by making it easier to build up within our most productive cities. The benefits of densification are clear. Not only are denser cities easier to get around by walking, cycling, or public transport, they are more productive too. In dense cities, workers have a wider array of jobs to choose from, while employers benefit from being close to their suppliers.
Britain is, on average, a densely populated country. Yet, as the Brownfield Passport policy paper points out, our cities stand out internationally for their lack of high density areas. There is no single square kilometre of Britain with more than 25,000 inhabitants. Paris, Madrid, and Milan all have areas with double the density of Maida Vale, the densest bit of London.
It isn’t just London either. Complaints about the poor quality of public transport outside the capital are fair. Yet, the problem isn’t solely a lack of investment in trams or rail electrification. That’s part of the problem, sure, but just as important is the fact that even when our cities are served by fast bus routes, trains, or trams, we don’t build around the stops. Birmingham’s got a larger population and a larger public transport network than Munich. But, 200,000 more people can get to Munich’s city centre within 30 minutes because Munich has way more high density neighbourhoods near transport stops.
The Labour Government’s proposal for a ‘Brownfield Passport’ would aim to change this by making the default answer to any planning application on previously developed (‘brownfield’) land ‘Yes’.
What would that mean in practice?
To start with, the Government has proposed stronger wording in the National Planning Policy Framework, the central document with which all England local plans have to demonstrate coherence. The wording change may appear relatively innocuous (the insertion of the words “proposals for which should be regarded as acceptable in principle”), but often tiny tweaks to language in a document like the NPPF do matter. The original ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ significantly increased the share of planning applications that were successful.
Yet at least according to the version of the policy in Keir Starmer’s speech, if not necessarily the more blandly worded press release on the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) website the Government intends to go even further with their brownfield passport proposal. The idea is to embed the principle that, provided they meet set criteria, brownfield developments should receive a quick yes. MHCLG have set out their intention to do this via new powers in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act to create ‘national development management policies’ (NDMP).
These policies would cover three key areas
Principle: How far can the ‘in principle’ support for Brownfield development be taken?
Scale: What level of density should areas target?
Form: How can design codes and guides be used to enable the right kind of ‘gentle densification’?
At this stage, the details are rather sparse. But, there are some encouraging signs, including most significantly a reference to New Zealand-style upzoning.
‘‘Policy could, for example, say that development should be of at least four storeys fronting principal streets in settlements which have a high level of accessibility, and/or set acceptable density ranges that allow for suitable forms of intensification. A similar approach has been used successfully in some other countries where efforts have been made to densify urban areas through ‘upzoning’.
During the recent election, Britain Remade advocated a similar policy of using National Development Management Policies to create an overwhelming presumption in favour of development for new six-storey developments within walking distance of stations and business hubs in cities where house prices are more than 7.5 times local incomes and housing targets have not been met. The policy would only apply when three additional conditions were met.
There should be no net loss of green space.
All new housing should be built to the highest energy-efficiency standards feasible and offer low-carbon heating options.
All new buildings should be built to a design code developed with local people getting a real say on design.
This effectively mirrored the substance of New Zealand’s nationwide upzoning policy (the National Policy Statement on Urban Development). When Auckland adopted a similar policy, ahead of the national rollout, rents there rose much more slowly than the rest of the country – one study from economists estimated rents were around a third lower as a result of the policy.
Part of the problem with housing targets under the status quo is that when housing targets bite, it is typically by restricting the right of councils to block speculative greenfield development. Under this approach, when housing targets aren’t met councils lose (or at least, are heavily limited) their ability to object specifically for urban regeneration and transit-oriented densification.
Also, contained within the Brownfield Passport Policy Paper is a reference to some London council’s using Supplementary Planning Guidance/Documents (SPG/SPD) to identify acceptable kinds of densification, such as demolishing and rebuilding corner plots. This appears to be a reference to Croydon’s SPD, which led to a pretty dramatic increase in the number of small developments in suburban areas.
In pure housing delivery terms, Croydon was a success. Yet, it led to a backlash. Labour lost Croydon at a time when they were winning councils across the country and the Conservatives immediately reversed the SPD. You can’t attribute the loss solely to the SPD – the council also went bankrupt and ULEZ came in at the same time – but it was clearly a major factor.
The principle of using SPG/SPDs to identify the most suitable opportunities for gentle densification (e.g. corner plots) is, however, sound. The challenge is striking the right balance to avoid a swift roll-back. The Government’s recent policy on Upward Extension may be one such example. The last Government’s policy – allowing mansard extensions in areas where it is in keeping with similar buildings – was narrow and targeted at an extremely uncontroversial type of development. The new policy has the potential to do more good, but it also risks allowing ugly or out-of-character upward extensions that eventually lead to push back. Requiring the extension’s facade to be in keeping with the style of the existing building, or in line with a local design code if one exists, would reduce any risk of backlash.

Another way to avoid a backlash would be to give individual streets the right to opt into development rather than grant blanket permissions, through street votes. The laws permitting street votes were passed in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act, but it remains without enabling regulations. Street votes would not deliver as many homes as applying a Croydon-style or New Zealand-style presumption across the country, but by allowing extra development only where there is strong local support, it is much less likely to be repealed.
On top of the suggestion to use National Development Management Policies (NDMPs), which allow swift updates to planning policy outside of the normal National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) process, the Government also raised the prospect of using Local Development Orders (LDOs) to support brownfield development.
LDOs grant area-wide planning permissions. Once an LDO is in effect, that area is effectively under a rules-based zoning system, like the ones used across the rest of Europe and much of America, rather than being subject to discretionary case-by-case planning.
Some LDOs are very specific. Take this one from Kensington and Chelsea, which grants planning permission for design-code compliant mansard extensions in a conservation area. But, LDOs can be much broader. For example, an LDO could grant planning permission to any four-storey or under building within a 10 minute walk either of a specific train station, or of any train station in that local authority area.
The key appeal of LDOs (and of zoning more generally) is that they provide housebuilders with certainty over what is and isn’t allowed. They don’t necessarily lead to many more homes being developed overall, but they reduce the ‘soft’ cost of development substantially, which is one reason why houses built in the US, Germany, and France are of higher construction quality than those built in the UK. Updates to the NPPF, new NDMPs and Croydon-style SPDs all still require developers to navigate the planning system. Implementing those policies might mean developers have a better chance of a ‘Yes’, but getting one would still be by no means certain. Under an LDO, developers don’t have to bother with a lengthy planning process – that’s already been done in advance for them. They can just get on with it.
The challenge is getting local authorities to actually create local development orders in the first place. Part of the reason why they don’t is they want to retain control and give themselves more opportunities to reject development.
One option would be to tie LDOs to housing targets. At the moment, councils have to provide an annually updated list of deliverable sites that can provide at least five years worth of their housing target. When a site is included in a local plan, it immediately becomes more valuable and development on the site is likely to be accepted. However, it is not necessarily a smooth or quick process.
Why not instead require urban councils with a track record of under-delivery to go further and have a sufficient chunk (say at least half) of their deliverable land supply covered by LDOs? This would fit with the Government’s broad principle of ‘how, not if’ on planning. Local decision makers who know their area best would still decide on which specific LDOs to use and where.
An additional option would be to tie access to transport funding to the use of LDOs. If a city region wants to access central government funding to build a tram, upgrade their bus services, or open new commuter rail stations, then the investment should be conditional on the use of LDOs near stations to ensure that benefits from transport investment aren’t left on the table.
Why planning makes us over-reliant on big developers
The premise of the Brownfield Passport is that making it easier to acquire planning permission within urban areas would lead to significantly more homes being built in such places. Some are sceptical. Defenders of Britain’s planning system argue that large developers, not a lack of planning permission, are the reason for underbuilding.
Why worry about making it easier to obtain planning permission, they argue, when Barratt and Taylor Wimpey do not even build out all the planning permissions they’ve won already? Oliver Letwin’s Review into Build Out is often cited in these conversations. While it didn’t find evidence of ‘land banking’ (in essence, sitting on land speculatively in the hope local property prices increase), it did identify a problem. Developers are reluctant to build out permissions as fast as possible because putting so many similar properties on the market at once could flood the market and lead to depressed prices.
Developers, it must be said, are a frustrating bunch even for a YIMBY like myself. I often sit in roundtables with them and hear countless maddening stories about planning committees and red tape. Listening to them on policy is often extremely useful, yet good policy and developers’ incentives do not always line up.
Take the question of where to build new homes. Economics tells us that it’s high-cost cities like London where development is likely to have the biggest impact on prices and economic growth. But, developers do not typically focus their calls on higher targets in places like London for a simple reason. In London, councils know that developers can afford to provide a larger share of ‘affordable’ homes and Section 106 payments for infrastructure. The end result is developers barely make any more money building an expensive home in London than they do building a cheaper home outside, say, Burnley.
But, it doesn’t make sense to shift the blame from our planning system to large developers when the housing market’s reliance on large developers is itself the fault of our planning system.
Navigating our planning system is expensive. And in recent decades, that cost, in both time and money, has grown substantially.
In 1990, it cost about £28,000 (adjusted for inflation) for a small builder to gather all the evidence needed to apply for an outline planning permission. Today, it’s more like £125,000. To get an outline planning permission, small builders are expected to provide around 30 separate assessments. What once took a few months, now takes roughly a year. Planning fees are up and rising. Developments recommended for approval by planning officers are regularly rejected by political planning committees.
Unsurprisingly, small builders have been squeezed out by large developers who can spread the enormous cost and risk over hundreds of units. In 1988, just under two-fifths of homes were built by small and medium-sized developers – they now build just one-tenth. Our system has become over-reliant on large developers building large projects.
Research from Warwick academics Amrita Kulka and Nikhil Datta found that large developments (500 homes or more) made up almost two-fifths (38%) of outstanding planning permissions. As the graphs below show, this is a big shift since the turn of the millennium when the percentage share was in single digits.
Not only are large developments vulnerable to problems around absorption rates, they’re also more likely to be hit with delays. They move through the planning system slower and can, in some cases, take more than a decade to get a decision.
The UK stands out internationally on this front. In Germany, a much larger share of homes are delivered by small builders. In fact, half of all turnover in Germany’s housebuilding sector came from SMEs. It’s a similar story in France. Where they differ from Britain is in having a predictable rules-based planning system opposed to a highly discretionary system where it is unclear in advance whether an application will be approved or not.
When similar reforms to Labour’s Brownfield Passport, for example, the upzonings in Houston and Auckland, were tried, housing supply increased dramatically. We should expect similar outcomes in Britain.
Moving to a more predictable zonal system isn’t a panacea. After all, the bit of zoning we have already, the Green Belt, is extremely restrictive. But for any given level of restrictiveness, a more predictable rules-based system will reduce our reliance on big developers doing big developments.
Labour’s plans for a Brownfield Passport have the potential not just to make it easier to build homes where they are most needed, but if done well, to also reshape the housing market so that smaller developers who deliver homes quicker can play a much bigger role.
One thing to add regarding small vs large developers: AIUI, there aren't any significant economies of scale involved in the actual building of houses, unlike in most industries. It costs a small builder as much to build a house as it does Barrett.