Planning matters

My summer intern project for Lichfields’ Edinburgh office looked at Brownfield sites in West Lothian and Mid Lothian that had been identified as development sites in the Edinburgh and Lothians Urban Capacity Study undertaken by Lichfields in 2002. The purpose being to find out what had happened to these sites in the intervening 22 year period – had they all come forward for development?

The Scottish Government has continued to push for a Brownfield First approach to housing development. Policy in the newest National Planning Framework[1] (NPF4) sets out an intent to ‘encourage, promote and facilitate the reuse’ of brownfield land, aiming to use vacant and derelict sites and buildings to reduce the need to build on greenfield sites. At the same time, housing demand across Scotland is high and rising, with one study[2] estimating there were 693,000 households with housing needs across the country. This is particularly significant in the Central Belt and around the City of Edinburgh, where population is predicted to continue to grow.

In 2002, Lichfields conducted an Urban Housing Capacity study in Edinburgh and the Lothians, surveying the capacity of the areas to accommodate additional housing development. By revisiting and exploring the current use the brownfield sites identified in the report for West Lothian and Midlothian 22 years on I was looking to address the following important question - can brownfield land adequately meet demand for housing? I also considered similar research by Lichfields in England[3], local housing audits and development plans and the vacant site register.

When the Urban Capacity report was published, it was estimated that 819 and 1,444-94 units could be produced between 2001 and 2015 in Midlothian and West Lothian respectively. Revisiting the sites surveyed to come to this figure however, it was found that only 38.2% of sites in Midlothian and 37.2% of sites in West Lothian had either been developed, were in the most recent housing audit or had been allocated as housing sites in the local development plan. Further, only 29% and 17% of sites had been developed for housing, indicating the actual number of units produced and the future potential was much lower than predicted. Of these, the bulk were detached homes, with only 8 developments of flats progressing out of the 149 sites revisited.

The outcomes of these sites have been varied, and not all bad – in West Lothian, many of the vacant commercial buildings identified are now reoccupied and in operation as retail/food & drink businesses. Others have however remained vacant, some scrubland, untouched in the past 20 years, with this being particularly true for small sites (it is worth noting that because a density multiplier approach was taken to calculate predictions for the county by using a smaller sample of sites, many of the buildings/land surveyed were small sites that would only yield 1-3 units if developed, and less likely to attract investment from home building companies).

More concerningly are the sites that have been deemed ‘non effective’ or ‘constrained’ in council Housing Land audits (7% of all sites in West Lothian), indicating that even where development has been attempted progress has been minimal and slow.

Instead of these brownfield site being the answer to delivering for housing need, there has been a trend of building on larger, greenfield sites, with 50 hectares of greenfield land to begin development north of Penicuik, and the new town of Shawfair set to provide 4,000 quality homes to Midlothian. All the while, the vacant and derelict site register includes many sites that have been derelict (and thus supposedly developable) since the 1980s.

So, what does this mean for the future of a ‘Brownfield First’ strategy to meet future housing needs?

First, it reveals the lengthy process of developing brownfield sites. Over 22 years on from the initial survey, a minority of sites have been developed, a pattern that is mirrored by the site register.

Looking closer at the constrained/non effective sites, where progress has been stalled, it seems the cost and time needed to develop potentially contaminated scrubland, vacant industrial buildings and demolish old buildings increases the delivery time for developments and does not increase housing supply as quickly as needed, if at all.

While some vacant sites, including old schools, can be repurposed easily, many sites listed on the register come with significant economic demands due to their past use. The largest category of site in both Midlothian and West Lothian were sites of previous Mineral Activity, requiring investment to clean the land to safe residential standards, build a development where people want to live and meet new biodiversity enhancement requirements. The high costs of development bring about questions of viability for many projects on brownfield land, as was found in a similar Lichfields study on brownfield land in England, Banking on Brownfield. This found that in the many cases, only locations with strong markets were able to overcome the economic challenges of building on brownfield.

The economics of clearing brownfield land isn’t the only cost trade off to consider when developing brownfield land – the value of land for alternative purposes to housing must be considered. Whilst many vacant sites that were documented in 2002 as having housing capacity weren’t later developed for residential purposes, many were also taken over by new occupants, producing new restaurants, photography studios and auto mechanics. These are valuable amenities and economic activators. In the case of occupants like car mechanics, they may require less thorough cleaning of the land to meet safety standards, and taking over previously vacant commercial units is much less costly than demolition/redevelopment, while still benefitting the area.

The Banking on Brownfield study found that prioritising brownfield land for housing is significant in pricing out industry to sub optimal locations – in a place like West Lothian, with an industrial past and large industrial parks still in use, allocating these sites for housing could be potentially harmful for local businesses who operate in the area. In addition to the socio-economic effects of allocating these sites to housing, there is also an environmental element to consider – many rare flora and fauna are native to brownfield sites[4], making them valuable to conserve and expensive to replace given new ecological enhancement requirements.

Perhaps the most important question to ask about brownfield land is, is there enough of it? Many of the sites audited were small and would only have added one or two units to the local housing supply – while this can add up over a county, it is not so appealing to those private developers responsible for most of the new home building in the area as it is less economical, leaving many of these sites unused. Another pattern observed while revisiting the audit was the frequency of detached homes being built over apartment buildings, even in sites pinpointed by the surveyors as potential locations for flats.  A key takeaway here, therefore, is while there may be significant amounts of brownfield land, it is not in big enough plots, particularly not for the type of home most in demand and most deliverable for developers at the moment.

Brownfield land undoubtedly has the potential to alleviate some of Scotland’s housing stress and create nicer places for people to live. 22 years on however, the same barriers to developing land identified as potential housing sites remain, in the Lothians and more broadly in Scotland. The Government recognised in NPF4 that ‘public sector led development can shape future markets and deliver development’ – it seems their investment and incentives will be vital in making brownfield land an economically viable option for housing developers, even if it is not enough to completely close the gap between housing supply and demand.