Councils will have new tools to speed up development of derelict and underused land for new homes, Housing and Planning Minister Gavin Barwell has confirmed.
Local authorities across the country will now have to produce and maintain up-to-date, publicly available registers of brownfield sites available for housing locally.
The new registers are designed to help housebuilders identify suitable brownfield sites quickly, promising to unlock land for thousands of new homes.
Communities will be able to highlight local derelict or underused building sites that are primed for redevelopment. This can bring investment to the area and increase the number of new homes in the area.
As set out in the recently published Housing White Paper, the registers are part of the government’s ambitious programme to speed up house building, promote brownfield sites for development and release land to deliver many more new homes.
Housing and Planning Minister Gavin Barwell said, “We need to build more homes in this country so making sure that we re-use brownfield land is crucial. We want to bring life back to abandoned sites, create thousands more homes and help protect our valued countryside. These new registers will give local authorities and developers the tools to do this.”
Brownfield registers were first piloted in 2016, when 73 local planning authorities across the country pioneered the measures.
IMAGE CREDIT: Richard Croft
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