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‘200,000 homes a year to be built up to 2020’ is the headline made by Ed Milliband at the Labour Party conference.

As a charity with strong environmental credentials you might expect us to be spitting the proverbial chips at such an announcement. Actually we’re not – there’s a strong social and economic case for building houses as well as a political will to do so. Therefore our stance is to pragmatically look at how the building of houses can be balanced with the needs of the environment and the community.

The first and most proffered solution is to build on Brownfield. There is enough brownfield land to be able to do this as estimates suggest that there are between 70,000 to 200,000 ha of brownfield land.  However for several reasons this just won’t work as the total solution. Firstly much of this land is unsuitable for development because of either contamination or topography.  Secondly a lot of the land is in the wrong places i.e. not where people actually want to live and there’s simply no point building where there is no demand.  Thirdly the arbitrary allocation of brownfield status ignores the fact that many brownfield space are actually richer in biodiversity and community value those designated as  green belt sites – as we’ve blogged on  this before.

However, the houses have to go somewhere!  In the first instance they have to go where they are needed i.e. where there is demand.  We also have to learn the lessons from the past and recreate some of the best examples of ‘sustainable development’  such as the Garden Cities (as we’ve blogged about before)

We strongly believe that a combined, strategic approach can deliver the most harmonious solutions for nature, communities and business.  The key is to provide enough sustainable quality open spaces and public realm within a development so you get a desirable area where people want to live and one that can actually enhance the environment.   Sensitive, controlled development can actively enhance and protect important natural habitats if planning gain or section 106 payments are used wisely and more importantly, creatively.  Going one step further, this might mean that funds can be used to remediate more of the brownfield (70,000 to 200,000ha remember) into green open space. This could result in a net gain of green space that has real long term environmental and community value and therefore everybody wins.

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