On paper, the Thames Valley should be about to play host to a remarkable housebuilding bonanza fuelled by dramatic transport improvements.
After all, places like Maidenhead, Twyford and Reading will have fast and direct Crossrail links with central London from 2019, while a new line off the Great Western route between Langley and Iver will give direct train access to Heathrow from Reading and Slough.
Meanwhile, junctions 3 to 12 of the M4 are to become a “smart” motorway, with state-of-the-art traffic management, and even the Shinfield Eastern Relief Road south of the M4 is a long-awaited infrastructure improvement, helping one of the region’s biggest bottlenecks.
Unsurprisingly these changes will be huge magnets for residential growth, to be quantified later this autumn in a Strategic Housing Market Assessment prepared by Berkshire and South Buckinghamshire councils and the Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership.
It is strongly anticipated that the SHMA will recommend two housing market areas.
One will be the East, comprising parts of Berkshire, Reading, Wokingham and Bracknell. The West will comprise Slough, Windsor, Maidenhead and south Buckinghamshire.
It is expected that the SHMA will sharply increase previous housing goals across the Thames Valley. “In Oxfordshire, for instance, its assessment responded to acute housing need by significantly increasing targets for all authorities,” explains Phil Brown, Savills’ head of planning in Reading – he expects a similar result with the Thames Valley SHMA.
So with a fast-improving infrastructure and something approaching a co-ordinated plan for housing growth, why are there long faces in the local residential development sector?
The answer contains those all-too-familiar words: green belt and slow planning.
Local experts agree that to achieve anything close to the SHMA’s anticipated targets, a mix is required of brownfield developments within existing conurbations, extensions to existing settlements, sensible discussions between councils over the “duty to co-operate” to meet housing needs, along with – crucially – green belt releases.
“Boroughs like Windsor and Maidenhead, which has resisted release of green belt sites, face challenges in negotiating with non-green belt partners to help meet needs,” explains Kim Cohen, a planning partner in Barton Willmore’s Reading office. She says opposition to green belt use will stop local plans catching up with the reality of housing needs.
In addition, Tim Burden, a director in the Thames Valley office of planning consultancy Turley, says green belt decisions have to be made imminently if local authorities are to stand a chance of meeting government deadlines to prepare local plans by early 2017.
“The need for these [green belt releases] will be compounded by Slough and Reading having very constrained administrative boundaries and limited opportunities for outward growth,” explains Burden. He has identified green belt land that is well-placed to meet housing requirements just north of Slough, on the London fringe around Heathrow and close to Maidenhead – all presenting local politicians with hugely sensitive decisions.
Even if the politicians bite the bullet, there is no guarantee that other elements of the planning process will respond to the surging housing demand.
“Community Infrastructure Levy is beginning to bite in the region and some councils are seeking high tariffs, which may make sites unviable if other local infrastructure improvements are also required,” warns Burden. This is likely to affect the delivery of affordable housing, which is already a significant issue in the Thames Valley.
On top of that, some boroughs are in any case still working on achieving objectives set out in the past. Wokingham, for example, is working from a 2010 Core Strategy created
before the introduction of the National Planning Policy Framework and so is vulnerable to decisions being overturned at appeal – thus making applications slow and expensive for developers.
Even in pro-development boroughs, there are delays in determining applications in the face of strong local opposition, and moving from outline to detailed consent appears to require ever-more complex submissions.
“It takes time to fulfil detailed design, discharge planning conditions and secure contracts, but current cost pressures for developers are exacerbating the challenges in bringing sites forward,” notes Cohen.
So while the Thames Valley has a remarkable infrastructure programme pushing housing demand into the fast lane, political torpor means supply remains stuck in low gear – and even high-speed Crossrail seems unable to break the residential development gridlock.
The elephant in the departure lounge
The upcoming Strategic Housing Market Assessment housing targets, when they are revealed, will be challenging enough. But what remains unspoken for now is the possibility that on top of those targets, Heathrow will get the go-ahead to develop a third runway.
“For a document looking to provide strategic guidance on housing numbers in the region for the next 20 years, at this stage [the SHMA] will not examine future growth at Heathrow,” warns Tim Burden of Reading-based planning consultancy Turley.
The Airport Commission’s report in July said the expansion of Heathrow could generate a need for 60,000 to 70,000 new homes by 2030, solely to accommodate staff, excluding any other infrastructure-led or intrinsic growth in the Thames Valley.
Such ambitious demand could only be met by “a step change in delivery”, he says.
Case study: Shanly Homes
Shanly, a medium-sized builder, has been quick to identify Thames Valley infrastructure improvements driving new housing. Over three years it has built 300 units in Maidenhead, with 260 more to be delivered by mid-2017 – in total, 10% of the town’s new homes.
Group operations director Tamra Booth says Maidenhead Waterways opening up town-centre water channels, as well as the arrival of Crossrail, have created growth opportunities.
McCarthy & Stone is interested in two sites, while a 35,000 sq ft waterside retail and leisure space is in planning. The arrival of a Premier Inn and renewed occupier interest in Nicholsons Shopping Centre make the area irresistible for residential development, says Booth.
“With WRATH [Western Rail Access To Heathrow] the area is only going to be more attractive to international commuters,” she claims.
Case study: Reading
A forecast of what may happen if an infrastructure-led boom in demand is not met by supply has been seen in Reading over the past year.
Data from LSL Property Services says in the year to early August, the town’s house prices rose by 15.2% – the biggest of any location in England and Wales.
“We opened the Reading office in 2013, soon after the Crossrail announcement came, and ever since requests for development sites have been continuous. Prices are undoubtedly on the rise, and steeply in parts,” says Ed Keeling of Savills’ Reading development team.
Eventually there will be more than 10,000 new houses serving Reading, concentrated in five locations between north and south Wokingham, north Bracknell and just south of Reading itself, decided on the basis of older housing targets ahead of this autumn’s SHMA.
Keeling says:“You could argue that this spread of housing is too focused on certain areas and not providing enough choice for buyers.”
