British Gas is holding on to ex-gas work sites in town centres so that they can be used for coal gas plants when North Sea gas runs out around 2015, according to Stephen Joseph of the TCPA Planning Aid Service(*). “This potential 30-year blight has alarmed communities and annoyed potential developers in a number of places.” Mr Joseph says that in a little-noticed clause in the Act privatising British Gas, all British Gas land was taken off the land registers.
Unused, surplus or waste land is not just a public sector problem, he argues. “Private developers, like public owners, find it opportune to hold on to land until its profitability can be maximised.
The public interest, in many areas, demands on the other hand that vacant sites should not blight the area . . . If identifying surplus land owned by public bodies is good, why not identify all land owned by everybody?”
(*) In the July/August issue of Town and Country Planning.
