A new report by Lichfields published by the Home Builders Federation (HBF) has put forward a series of recommendations that offer solutions to Natural England’s ban on building new homes.
Concerns over pollution have led to Natural England imposing a moratorium on a quarter of local authorities for some, or all, land in their areas. The blame is attributed to pollution from farming – especially the result of chicken farming, as reported by BBC’s Countryfile recently, storm and sewage spills and, surprisingly, new development.
The ban has led to 120,000 homes being put on hold in the middle of a housing crisis, with serious knock-on effects on the local SME builders and tradespeople operating in these areas and their local economies.
Government is aware but acting slowly, with a statutory commitment that wastewater treatment works must be improved by 2030. The HBF claims this is too far away for many SME housebuilders whose businesses may close in this time.
Nutrient neutrality solutions
The report states that the contribution of all housing stock is estimated to be less than 5% in terms of overall pollution. Therefore, adding 120,000 homes to the 25 million existing English dwellings would lead to a minimal increase.
It found that Natural England’s nutrient calculator needs adjusting to more accurately reflect the impact of new residential development, taking into account the increased water-efficiency of modern new builds compared with older housing stock.
This could result in a reduction in the land-take requirements for mitigating nature-based solutions, which is considerable, and puts forwards a proposal that would enable limited amounts of housebuilding to resume, as well as reducing the amount of valuable farmland needed to create these nature-based solutions.
Recommendations for change:
- Adjust Natural England’s calculator to reflect the net additional population resulting from new housing – rather than focusing on the gross population of the new dwellings – based on an application of the net additional average household size; and
- assess the number of dwellings to be delivered before 2030 rather than the need to mitigate a large development in its entirety, regardless of when the houses will be delivered. In particular this would allow large phased schemes to benefit from the planned statutory improvements to wastewater treatment works expected by 2030.
Stewart Baseley, Executive Chairman of the HBF said: “It is widely accepted that the ban on new housing is disproportionate and unnecessary and does nothing to tackle the main causes of the nutrients issue. The new report identifies more balanced and speedier solutions that would help to alleviate this socially and economically damaging ban.”
Download Nutrient Neutrality Solution Finding – Identifying Mitigation Requirements to 2030
Image by Choi from Pixabay
