August 2007 Archives

Just read a little article in Planning Magazine the key bit of which is a recent report by the RTPI which states that ten of the UK's top housebuilders hold planning permissions for nearly 225,000 homes. Put bluntly, they're not building as much stuff as they should; instead they're land banking it. This got me thinking, if you could look back at all the residential new build planning applications made in London in say 2004, and track their progress to the present day, how many would have been built and how many would still be stuck in the pipeline?

To get a catastrophic failure on this level you’ve got to start with the basics, really, really bad urban design. Architects Alison and Peter Smithson did just that with a plan so appalling that they were never trusted with another large scale public project ever again. Now add some seriously poor quality building to the mix and finish off with years of under investment. Welcome to the architectural, structural and social disaster that is the Robin Hood Garden Estate in South Bromley. But things are about to change, a recent JV between Tower Hamlets and English Partnerships plans to demolish the estate to provide over 3,000 new homes. They’ve even got a new name for it, Blackwall Reach.

In the A Nice Little Earner blog posted in early August the benefits of changing from live-work to pure resi in Hackney were examined. There is however a downside to all this, as highlighted by an article in the Estates Gazette this week regarding the leaseholders at Persimmon Homes’ Union Wharf scheme. Apparently the council have told them that they have to either permanently and completely cease residential-only use within 28 days or apply for planning permission for pure resi use, or face legal proceedings. As mentioned before, changing from live-work to pure resi can only be a good thing (for the leaseholder) so expect a flood of change of use applications in Hackney in the very near future.

A lot of new residential schemes in London involve the loss of an employment generating site. This usually takes the form of office to resi, pub to resi, school to resi conversions. London boroughs don't like this and are keen to see some employment use continue in new developments. Developers however, would sometimes like to build pure resi schemes. In the past the way around this was to build live-work units. However, as noted previously on this blog, (End Work For £16,435.20) this didn't really work out as there was precious little work going on in most live-work units. Local authorities have become wise to this in the last few years, and have increasingly begun to refuse to count live-work as employment generating. So, with the vacuum left by the demise of live-work, will anything come to take its place? Something already has and that something is the resurrection of the Artist Studio. Art...well that's sort of work, sort of employment generating... sort of difficult to define as well....

...Anthony Donaldson's homage to Hitchcock at the Gainsborough Studios in Shoreditch.

All very nice I hear you say but how much did it cost? No exact figures but here's the relevant bit from the S106...

"the provision of £200,000 for environmental improvements to Shoreditch Park and an appropriate amount to pay for an art feature to commemorate the historic use of the studios for film making".

Merton Council is considering plans for a new station in Mitcham next week, and the plans look likely to be approved. Some locals were grumbling about increased traffic and parking problems but apparently over 13,000 people live within 10 minutes walk (how long the average punter takes to walk 800 metres apparently), and some statistical bod has predicted 90% of the estimated 1062 daily trips to the station will be made on foot.

You can be one of those 13,000 people living in a two bed house if you've got just under £245,000.

A lot can hang on the definition of affordable housing. In November 2006 the Government published its final Planning Policy Statement 3 (PPS3). On page 25 of that report the word recycled appears under the definition of affordable housing section and it’s going to be a keyword in future dealings between developers and planners. PPS3 states that "for a residential unit to be considered affordable it has to remain at an affordable price or, if these restrictions are lifted, for the subsidy to be recycled for alternative affordable housing". This is a very clear definition unlike the one in the previous draft PPS3 which stated that any subsidy should generally be recycled. What this means is that affordable units have to remain as such and if they’re sold on the open market some of the money made has to be used to pay back the initial affordable housing subsidy. All this is a rather long winded way of coming around to the point, which is that some affordable housing schemes currently operating, such as Shared Equity, Home Buy and Right-to-buy Home Buy are now, by PPS3’s definition no longer classed as affordable housing. Trouble is developers tend to think that they still are.

DIY Housing Crisis Solver:

For any problems you may encounter with your new home contact Xin Yucai, The Pipe, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China - he's done it all before....

I was having a quick look through the live-work report mentioned in the last entry. The table on page 101 is particularly interesting especially the entry for 74-108, Cheshire Street in Shoreditch which reads - "live-work on ground at huge discount to pure residential". This got me thinking...if you can now legitimately change from live-work to pure resi for £512 per sq m would it be worth actually doing it? Would the discount you got in the first place now cover the cost of converting to pure resi and would it leave you with any profit? The answer is a resounding yes...to the tune of £73,067 in this instance, a nice little earner.

A few years ago The London Borough of Hackney had a brilliant idea. To encourage the development of small businesses in the borough they adopted a live-work policy encouraging developers to build units where people would both live and work. Brilliant...apart from the fact that it didn't work because (despite the fact that it's unlawful) people were more interested in living in the units than actually doing any work in them. That's where we (London Residential Research) came in. In April 2005 Hackney commissioned a report from us on the whole live-work situation in the borough, our conclusion... "allow the change of use from live-work to pure residential for a fee". And that's exactly what they did. So now for just £512 per sq m you too can convert your live-work unit to pure residential. To see how this translates to the real world a planning application for the conversion to residential from live-work for 3 Mill Row, London, N1 5RL went before Hackney planning committee this week where planning permission was granted. The cost of converting this 32.1 sq m house to residential...£16,435.20.

A couple moved to a village house in King’s Lynn next to a plot of greenfield land that had recently been used for agriculture. Greenfield land, recently used for agriculture, no chance of the view being spoiled by any form of development then. Wrong. Shortly afterwards the local Council approved a planning application for six houses on the site, members deciding that they could redesignate it as brownfield land despite this being:

• A: contrary to the Government’s definition of brownfield land,


• B: contrary to the Council’s own adopted policies
,

• C: contrary to the recommendation of the planning officers who had assessed the site.

The couple complained to the Ombudsman who found council members guilty of maladministration and ordered them to apologise to Mr and Mrs X (not their real names) for the failure in proper decision making and pay them £750 for their distress and outrage at the way this matter has been handled.

...at Barratt's GWQ development in Brentford.