The Labour Government plans to increase housebuilding, with one of its aims being to deliver more homes through New Towns. The country is also increasingly dependent on large sites (those with over 1,000 homes) to deliver new housing supply (see Land Matters). Large sites, however, take a significant amount of time to get planning, require time and funding to put in enabling infrastructure, and can have very different build-out rates depending on factors such as location, market strength, and range of tenures.

Through our research and roundtable discussions with key stakeholders delivering large sites, we identify that in order to unlock and speed up delivery on these large sites, the industry needs increased government intervention and action to enable the following:

This sits alongside the well-known need to ensure land supply, support demand and ensure there is enough capacity and resource (skilled workers) in the industry to deliver the homes.

New Towns (over 10,000 homes) are an additional route to delivering more homes over the long term. In addition to the key solutions needed to support large sites, if New Towns are to be successful, they will need to have:

• a range of tenures
  
  
• good connectivity to strong employment areas
  
  
• good transport links to enable sustainable development
  
  
• have enough funding to secure the enabling infrastructure and not be overburdened with costs so that they necessitate relatively high house prices

Government, therefore, needs to choose wisely which locations will make for the most successful New Towns based on these factors.

>> Read the full report here

Report contents:

• Summary
• Article 1: Is the planning system equipped to deal with large sites?
• Article 2: Unlocking enabling infrastructure
• Article 3: Variable delivery rates
• Conclusions and solutions

Savills would like to thank the following for their input into discussions around the issues and solutions needed to deliver large sites which informed the content and conclusions of this publication: Buckland Developments, Christ Church Oxford, Folkestone & Hythe District Council, GummerLeathes, Homes England, Lands Improvement Holdings, Marshall, Persimmon, Places for People, The Crown Estate, The Church Commissioners, Urban and Civic.

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