Brownfield priority needs a delivery audit
The new spatial-strategy regime begins this month, but ministers have not yet specified what authorities must measure before preferring greenfield allocations.
Statutory Instrument 2026/1157 starts the new spatial-development-strategy regime on 26 November 2026, but it does not yet make brownfield delivery a testable planning rule. The instrument, made on 3 November 2026 and signed by Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook, also brings section 39 of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 into force on 4 November 2026. That section requires the Secretary of State to make regulations on the desirability of prioritising previously developed land. It does not say what evidence an authority must collect, what counts as deliverable, or when a brownfield shortfall permits easier greenfield land to be preferred.
The machinery now switched on is substantial. Section 58 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 inserts Part 1A into the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, requiring strategic planning authorities to prepare spatial development strategies. The Act defines those authorities as strategic planning boards, combined authorities, combined county authorities, upper-tier county councils outside those areas and qualifying unitary authorities. It requires a strategy timetable, a draft, consultation, examination and submission before adoption; the Secretary of State can direct changes, take over a failing strategy and recover intervention expenditure from the authority.
But the brownfield mechanism is narrower than the political shorthand suggests. New section 12G requires an authority, when preparing a draft strategy, to have regard to prescribed matters. Section 39 requires ministers to prescribe the desirability of prioritising previously developed land as one of those matters. A duty to have regard can require a serious and evidenced consideration; it is not, on its face, a brownfield-first allocation sequence, a remediation grant, a grid connection offer or a prohibition on greenfield development.
Nor does the enacted framework make the practical constraints compulsory evidence. Section 12D says a strategy may specify or describe strategically important infrastructure, while it may state the amount or distribution of housing. It cannot specify individual development sites. That leaves a clear job for the regulations: require an auditable evidence schedule behind the strategy, rather than a general assertion that brownfield has been considered. Without it, authorities can present gross land capacity alongside housing need, then discount difficult sites through opaque viability assumptions while allocating land that is simpler to service.
The commencement instrument supplies no such schedule and adds no transition rules for emerging local plans or existing cross-boundary arrangements. Its explanatory note says a separate impact assessment was unnecessary because no significant impact was foreseen, while directing readers to parent-Act assessments. That is not an estimate of the staff, technical surveys, consultation, examination and legal costs caused by a 26 November 2026 duty. The immediate beneficiary is central government, which gains a firmer route to direct strategic plan-making; the immediate payer is likely to be the authority asked to assemble the evidence unless MHCLG provides a named budget.
Where it is already working
- England’s Brownfield Land Release Fund 2 shows why land policy needs a capital ledger: the Local Government Association reports that funding was awarded to projects across councils to remediate otherwise unviable council-owned land, and that homes had been completed on land unlocked by the programme. The funded pipeline was substantial, which is useful evidence of potential but not a substitute for completed homes.
- London’s Annual Monitoring Report shows the value of separating approvals from delivery. The Greater London Authority recorded housing approvals but fewer completions in 2023/24, against an annual target, using Planning London Datahub records. A brownfield rule should require the same distinction: capacity, consented schemes, starts, connections and completions are different measures.
- Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation records delivery by status rather than treating a pipeline as construction. Its 2024/25 monitoring report recorded homes completed, homes under construction and homes with permission but not started. That is the reporting discipline a strategic brownfield evidence base needs before it is used to justify land choices across an authority area.
What would scale it
The brownfield-prioritisation regulations should require a published brownfield delivery audit at draft-strategy stage and at least annually thereafter. For every strategic broad location, it should separate gross theoretical capacity from net viable capacity; identify consented, funded, under-construction and completed development; state whether land contamination has been investigated and remediated; identify the expected remediation cost, funding source and remaining gap; and record flood mitigation, transport capacity, water and wastewater constraints, and electricity-network reinforcement or grid connection status. A capacity figure without those fields is a land register, not a delivery plan.
The regulations should also require an authority allocating greenfield land to publish the comparison it used: which brownfield capacity was excluded, why it was excluded, what intervention could make it viable, who would pay, and whether the barrier is planning, remediation, grid connection, transport, land assembly or developer timing. This would not force every difficult urban site to be built. It would force the choice to be explicit and permit councils, residents, developers and ministers to test whether greenfield is genuinely necessary in the strategy period.
MHCLG should match that duty with a multi-year preparation and remediation budget. The Brownfield Land Release Fund 2 evidence shows that grant support can turn council-owned sites that are otherwise unviable into completed homes, but its project funding is not a substitute for the data, technical staff and examinations needed to run the new strategic system. Ministers should publish the costed implementation plan before the first strategies reach examination: funding per authority, the expected preparation timetable, the data standard, and the annual national totals for remediation funded, grid capacity secured, homes started and homes completed. Until the regulations require those measurements, brownfield remains a consideration authorities must mention, not a delivery policy they can be held to.