Generation Rent has given a qualified thumbs up to Housing Secretary Michael Gove’s ideas for homes on brownfield land.

This week Gove announced that every council in England will be told that it must prioritise brownfield developments and be less bureaucratic and more flexible in applying policies that threaten housebuilding on brownfield land.  

The bar for refusing brownfield plans will also be made much higher for major city councils failing to hit locally agreed housebuilding targets. 

Planning authorities in England’s 20 largest cities and towns will be made to follow a ‘brownfield presumption’, if housebuilding drops below expected levels. This will make it easier to get permission to build on previously developed brownfield sites.

A consultation by the UK government will run until March 26 and the government will look to implement these changes to national planning policy as soon as possible.  

Responding to all this Ben Twomey – chief executive of activist group Generation Rent – says: “One of the key ways to get rents under control is to build more homes, and demand is greatest in cities so we need to make the most of brownfield land. 

“That means making sure we’re building flats where possible and a large proportion is social housing for the people hit the hardest by the housing crisis. But brownfield is not enough – we need to look at extending cities, particularly around existing infrastructure like train stations.”

Twomey then returns to the issue of the Renters Reform Bill currently going through Parliament.

He says: “Announcing new planning rules will not fix things for renters right now. Despite five years of promises, we still face arbitrary eviction and mouldy, draughty homes.

“The Renters Reform Bill is supposed to fix this but has been held up yet again. Unless the Prime Minister urgently brings back and passes the Renters Reform Bill, renters will face many more years of mistreatment and exploitation while we wait for new brownfield homes to be put up.”