Sam Stafford's Blog

The Prime Minister recently announced plans to "turbocharge" development within England's largest towns and cities as part of the recent ' Brownfield Reform Day ' announcements. I thought then that now would be a good time to share a conversation that I recorded online back in August 2023 with old friends of the podcast David Milner and Rebecca Coley , and new friend of the podcast Mark Aylward , about the redevelopment of big box retail parks. It is available via this link or from iTunes and Spotify . The prompt for the conversation was this 2018 report that I had come across by Create Streets and Policy Exchange called ‘Better Brownfield’, which claimed that there are over 1200 sites across London currently occupied by single-storey big box retail and industrial sheds and that, by ‘banishing boxland’, these sites could accommodate between 250,000 and 300,000 new homes. Who owns and manages assets like these? What is the market like for big boxes in the new wo...

Episode 117 of the podcast is available now via this link or from iTunes and Spotify . This is a ramblechat that I recorded at Soho Radio Studios in London with friends of the podcast Hashi Mohamed , Simon Ricketts , Nicola Gooch and Andrew Taylo r during which we reflect on another exciting few weeks in the fast-paced, ever-changing, rock and roll world of town and country planning. The conversation, recorded at the end of February 2024, takes in the back-dating of Section 106 indexation and what that says about local authority finances; the need to consider PPAs, statutory consultees and performance targets in the round; BNG and my debut appearance on Countryfile ; the Brownfield Reform Day consultations on a presumption in favour of brownfield development, permitted development rights and the Mayor of London’s call-in powers; and the Competition & Markets Authority's report on the housebuilding industry. All in approximately 45 minutes or so...

Episode 116 of the podcast is available now via this link or from Apple and Spotify . Building GP surgeries, schools and roads is not just difficult it is so difficult, according to no less of an expert on such matters than the Prime Minister, as to be a reason to not even contemplate growing existing towns and cities. In introducing recent proposals to put “rocket boosters” under construction in existing built-up areas, Rishi Sunak was quoted in The Times as saying that “We need to build homes in the places where people need and want them. There’s little point trying to force large new estates on our countryside and Green Belt when that is where public resistance to development is strongest and where the GP surgeries, schools and roads don’t exist to support new communities.” It is not uncommon though to see opinion polls from time to time highlighting that for people who are not supportive of more homes being built, building more or improving existing medical facilities would like...

The Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) has published the most forensic analysis of the housebuilding sector's interaction with the planning system since the Barker Review of 2004. The final report is available here  and is essential reading for any planning and property professionals because it serves two very important purposes. Firstly, it lays bare many of the challenges that planning and property professionals have to grapple with on a daily basis and in a clear-eyed way deals with some of the misunderstandings about the homebuilding sector. Planning In order to deliver a given number of homes, the number of planning permissions granted must be sustained at a somewhat higher level, over an extended period, as a proportion of permissions will lapse or be re-applications relating to a previously permissioned project (4.13). The number of new permissions has at no point been significantly above 300,000, indicating that insufficient new permissions are being granted to suppo...