Comment

New settlements: it’s time we move the focus away from housing

According to recent YouGov polling [1] from over the summer, 71% of people believe that the Conservative-led governments which have been in power since 2010, bear “a great deal” or a “fair amount” of responsibility for the housing crisis that the UK currently faces.

Read the results of the poll.

It’s unsurprising, therefore, why Michael Gove sought to set out new measures over the summer to help the Government meet its target of building one million homes during the Conservatives’ tenure in office, which included several plans to relax planning rules and speed up the delivery of housing.
 
There is no denying the importance of this Government’s one million housing policy; we drastically need to build more market and affordable homes to solve the ongoing national housing crisis. But the Government’s “target” is almost laughable given only 491,760 new homes have been built in the last three years combined. Of that total number, only 22.9% are classed as affordable homes.

The case for new settlements

The pressure on private developers and local authorities to deliver more affordable housing has left them essentially with two choices: support several small-scale residential projects on the outskirts of existing towns and cities or embark on the challenge of creating entire new settlements.
 
Typically, a new settlement project must consist of at least 4,000 homes to justify the supply of key supporting infrastructure, such as new schools and GP surgeries, to transform it into a true ‘settlement’. The scale of these new settlement projects can drastically support local authorities in meeting the housing targets laid out in their Local Plans and represent a unique opportunity for innovative and nationally significant placemaking.
 
However, one of the biggest hurdles facing the development of new settlements, aside from land availability, is how developers can create meaningful spaces from day one.
 
While it may sound contradictory given the current housing crisis and lack of affordable housing, the focus needs to be on first supplying everything else within that community, apart from housing, that will help to create meaningful communities where residents can live comfortably from day one of moving into their new home.
 
That means ensuring schools are built and ready to accept new students, GP practices are ready and staffed, transport networks are fully operational to get residents from A to B, and community centres are available for residents to benefit from.
 
It’s this supporting infrastructure that should be at the heart of new settlement placemaking and available to all residents moving into their new homes. Yet, they are rarely prioritised during the development of new communities. If the local amenities are not present to support these new residents from the outset, they will likely develop habits around services outside the locality. This will only serve to undercut the growth and development of the settlements in the long run.

Barriers to delivery

So, what is stopping this from happening?
 
Unsurprisingly, it all comes down to funding. The financial outlay of any new settlement project is vast. A 10,000-home new settlement would take decades to be developed. Under standard housebuilder methods of construction in 2023, about 250 to 300 homes can reliably be delivered in a single location each year.
 
This sheer scale means they require considerable upfront investment from the master developer and their partners, putting pressure on them to find ways of delivering faster returns. It is also important to note that no single developer builds an entire new settlement. They will always sell off plots to others to reduce their exposure and increase the pace of development — but this can add additional layers of complexity in planning and coordination.
 
This understandably results in developers focusing on the delivery of housing first, which can be sold as soon as they’re built. However, the impact of this is the creation of new settlements centred around housing rather than infrastructure, services, and amenities. The result can be soleless housing estates with no sense of place that become a terrible advert for long-term new settlement development elsewhere. A shift in focus, driven by the central government, is therefore needed.

A policy that reflects modern planning

There is much more the Government could be doing to enable, rather than encumber, the work of private developers and local authorities.
 
By having a national planning policy that responds to and supports new settlement development, developers can focus on delivering the infrastructure that matters. For instance, creating a dedicated infrastructure fund that supports the development of schools and healthcare centres would allow developers to prioritise these before housing.
 
Similarly, the scale and importance of new settlement projects bring into question whether they should have their own planning procedures. As it stands, new settlement schemes, irrespective of scale, go through Local Plans and are left to local authorities to manage.
 
By classifying new settlement development under Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), the Government can move the responsibility of these developments away from under-resourced local authorities while ensuring the correct considerations are given to projects before planning consent is granted.
 
In a similar vein, creating a National New Settlement task force within the Government could guarantee these projects, which deliver so much in terms of housing and economic growth, are given the priority they deserve and ensure they are able to access both funding and resources necessary to progress them.

Final thoughts

New settlement projects should play an important role in this Government’s approach to tackling its housing targets. However, delivering on the 300,000 new homes annual target would, in effect, require us to build thirty new 10,000-home settlements across the country every 12 months — no small feat in the current economic climate.
 
New settlements are a solution that requires significant upfront investment, the allotment of sizeable portions of greenfield land, the deployment of modern methods of construction to accelerate delivery, a modernised planning system and long-term commitment from many stakeholders.
 
Only then can we guarantee we are building meaningful communities that households can immediately benefit from.

7 November 2023

This article originally appeared in Inside Housing.