We must use brownfield sites to plug homes gap

SOME readers may have been fortunate enough to catch a documentary on Channel 4 the other week, called ‘Dispatches: Britains Housebuliding Scandal.’

The programme explored the power and grip that big housing development companies have over our planing processes, and the huge areas of land they control.

Yet in spite of this, house building is taking place at far too slow a rate leading to a chronic housing shortage.

The process of holding land, often with planning permission, and not building on it is known as ‘land banking.’ Shockingly the Dispatches programme reported that in England and Wales there are over 645,000 vacant plots, almost all on brownfield sites, with planning permission, and ready to bulid on, but where no works have begun on site.

I have discovered, with the help of the Local Government Association, that in the borough of Stockport as of March 2015 there were 1,900 such brownfield sites where building is permitted and yet where nothing is being built. These past months I have been asking the government questions in Parliament about how we can make better and quicker use of this vacant brownfield land, to reduce or even remove the need to build on the green belt surrounding Stockport.

I shall also continue to ask the government to take steps to reduce the amount of land banking developers are able to do. Residents who want to support me in this can sign my petition to save green belt land at williamwragg.org.

I hope government, councils, and house builders will re-double their efforts to make the best use of readily available brownfield land and to start to plug the housing gap.