The Welbeck/Osborne Clarke Residential Land Market event – May 2015

Here the some quotes from the panel of our Residential Land Market event hosted at One London Wall this week. We hope you all enjoyed the debate.

The panel included:

• Alistair Watson, Senior Partner, Welbeck Land, Welbeck Land (Chair) 
• Stephen Greenhalgh, Deputy Mayor for policing and crime and Candidate for May 2016 Mayoral Election
• John Steel QC, 39 Essex Chambers
• Nigel McGurk, Director, Erimax Land Planning and Communities
• Susan Emmett, Director, Savills Residential Research
• Philip Barnes, Group Land and Planning Director, Barratt Developments PLC

On the market:

“Need to build 240,000 houses a year just to tread water.” Susan Emmett:

“The two biggest planning issues facing Government are airports in the South East and planning around housing in our cities.” Philip Barnes

On a referendum in Europe:

“A referendum on Europe isn’t going to affect development.” John Steele

“I do support the idea of getting a better deal in Europe for the UK – I just don’t see it affecting the housing supply”. Stephen Greenhalgh

“It’ll be similar to Scotland – lots of fear and debate but in the end, people will vote to stay in Europe. One thing to note is that there was a stagnant period for Scottish land prices during the Scottish referendum, but since the vote, there’s been a quarterly growth of in land value of 7%.” Susan Emmett

On the Government’s Housing Association policy:

“Around 300,000 HA tenants in London who don’t have a right to buy. Yet a large proportion of those in LA housing do have that right. The trick is to make it a fair deal and ring-fence the proceeds for London for development in London.” Stephen Greenhalgh

“Sure. We have a housing shortage, not just in the capital but across the country. But at the same time, HAs have got their act together over the past few years and are doing a great job. I just ask ‘Why choose this way of home ownership when there are many other routes?'”. Nigel McGurk

On land tax:

“I’d caution any politician against it as it’s never as easy or simple to implement as they think. CIL has had 3 amendments already – and it was intended to be a simplification.” Philip Barnes

“It has to be about simplicity. For me we should only have one plan and that’s the one that says:’we support growth that makes places nicer’.”Nigel McGurk

“For me CIL is a blunt tool as it’s a uniform charge on development and doesn’t take into account the nuances needed. When I worked in property, I loved develpoers who wanted to make a place better and do it quickly and hated the ones who sat on strategic land and did nothing with it as an asset class.” Stephen Greenhalgh

On landbanking:

“At Barratt, we have no issue with a use or it lose it policy. We’re keen to get in and out as soon as possible. It frustrates us when good land is sat around unused. We’re a return on capital business so we don’t land bank at all. I spoke with an MP recently who felt that we were landbanking on a particular project. I walked him through every step of the process and explained why the delays weren’t from our end and he got it. We agree that 3 years is too long to take to get consent, but it’s often not the housebuilders that are causing delays (or landbanking) even though it may look that way.” Philip Barnes

“In our research, we concluded that housebuilders don’t landbank. They come in later in the planning process. It seems to us that some of the landbankers are public bodies and the evidence points away from the housebuilders.” Susan Emmett

On greenbelt:

“Greenbelt was last useful when England could put together a squad to win the football world cup but not anymore. Greenfield is often now degraded land, which isn’t being used. I say if the best place for something is in greenbelt, then let’s put it in the greenbelt.” Nigel McGurk

“Greenbelt should be released in different areas – each part of the greenbelt should be considered on a local basis – but subject to criteria also to be used for future releases locally. Leeds and London may both be cities but they face completely different constraints on their abilities to use land.” John Steel QC

“I’m a huge fan of greenbelt. I’d encourage everyone to go to Manchester City and think about redevelopment that has taken place there. Likewise in London – it’s the best city in the world because it retains its green spaces. Here’s a simple, stunning fact for you: In Manchester if you built 1,000 homes a year for 900 years, you’d only cover half of the greenbelt land there.” Philip Barnes

“London’s density is half of that of NY or Paris. I recently went to Clerkenwell where increasing numbers want to live in that urban setting, unlike a while ago when they suburbanised. I think that the big opportunity is to drive development on brownfield. For me, brownfield estates and industrial estates are under dense and could take densification. Then I spoke to people about estates in New Addington who said that they know that their estate could take infill’s as they’re under dense – but that they can’t do so as they’re considered to be a metropolitan area.” Stephen Greenhalgh

“Greenbelt is an emotive term – and it doesn’t help – I think we need to make it sound more boring and planner-ish section something or other of the Act. Then the emotion in the debate would disappear and we’d have a more level headed debate about it.” Susan Emmett

“Instead of greenbelt, can we call it the gastric band?”. Anon (from the audience)

On the effect of the election result on planning:

“Centralising decision power making on planning doesn’t speed up the process. Well, except powers granted to the mayor of course!” Stephen Greenhalgh

“It’s a matter of speeding up the process. You can only do this by getting a local planning process in place first. There is an incentive for development consents because the consultation is going to be done earlier in the process. But it does mean yet further upfront cost for developers.” John Steel QC

“If we returned back to building 10-20 council houses in every village as we did in the 1920s, we’d solve the housing crisis. That alone would remove the stresses and strains from the system.” (Audience)

“Hopefully, 5 year political mandate means they can move away from tomorrow’s headlines and we can plan for the 11 million additional people who will live in the UK in 20 years’ time.” Nigel McGurk

“It takes us 70 weeks from our first meeting to getting granted permission – which is more time than it takes on a 50-house site to go from brownfield to finished and off site. It’s time for us to do something more radical.” Philip Barnes

“Consultation and delivery must be sorted out by central government.” John Steel QC