A commentary on strategic land promotion in the UK

• Author: Peter Jones,Daphne Comfort
• Published date: 01 May 2020
• Date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2003

COMMENTARY

A commentary on strategic land promotion in the UK

Peter Jones | Daphne Comfort

School of Business and Technology, University

of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK

Correspondence

Peter Jones, School of Business and

Technology, University of Gloucestershire,

Cheltenham, UK.

Email: pjones@glos.ac.uk

The supply of land for new housing within the UK is an important and a contested

issue. Strategic land promotion, namely, the identification, acquisition, and promotion

of land through the planning system, has become a major element in contributing to

government targets for new housebuilding in the UK. This brief commentary paper

outlines the characteristics of strategic land promotion, provides illustrations of the

range of schemes land promotion companies have pursued within the UK, and

concludes with some wider reflections on the process.

1|INTRODUCTION

The supply of land for new housing is an increasingly important, and a

contested, public issue. In her foreword to “Fixing our broken housing

market”(Department for Communities and Local Government, 2017),

Theresa May, the then Prime Minister, argued “we need more land for

homes where people want to live”and “we need to ensure that homes

are built quickly once planning permissions are granted.”Strategic land

promotion, “the identification, acquisition and promotion of land

through the planning system”(Ainscough, 2019), has become an

important element in contributing to government targets for new

house building. Richborough Estates (2017), one of the UK's leading

strategic land promotion companies, argued “it is impossible for the

majority of housebuilders to promote all of their sites through the

planning system and the role of the land promoter becomes

fundamental to the delivery of housing.”That said, neither the

National Audit Office's (2019) report entitled “Planning for new

homes”nor the latest version of the “National Planning Policy Frame-

work”(Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government,

2019) made any explicit mention of strategic land promotion. With

this in mind, this commentary paper outlines the characteristics of

strategic land promotion, provides some illustrations of the range of

schemes land promotion companies have pursued within the UK, and

offers some wider reflections on the process.

2|STRATEGIC LAND PROMOTION

Lichfields (2018) recognised “increased attention is being given to

how housing is delivered, focused on issues relating to land, planning,

finance, tenure and construction.”However, Lichfields (2018) also

suggested that “relatively little attention has been given to the differ-

ent types of organisation involved in bringing forward new housing

and the role they play in the light of the risks involved in the planning

and development process.”A number of strategic land promotion

companies are increasingly playing an important role in bringing land

forward for development. Many of these companies define strategic

land, and their role in promoting it, in a number of ways.

For King West (2019), for example, “strategic land is usually

greenfield in nature and located on the edge or close to exiting

settlements, especially those sustainable towns and villages with good

transport links and local facilities. Usually such land doesn't have

planning permission but has the potential in the medium to long term

to achieve planning permission.”Adalta Real (2019) describes residen-

tial strategic land promotion as “land that has a prospect of being suc-

cessfully taken through the planning process for residential

development,”and the company emphasise “we use our market

knowledge to identify areas where demand exists for housing devel-

opment, which we feel have a genuine prospect of obtaining a satis-

factory planning consent.”Wallace Land (2019) claims “our extensive

experience in the promotion and delivery of strategic land allows us to

guide our clients through the ever changing and complex planning

process,”and “our goal is achieving the maximum potential asset value

for our clients through the planning and land promotion process.”

Each land promotion company has its own specific way of work-

ing, but within the land promotion process, a number of common

steps can be identified, namely, site identification and appraisal;

negotiations with the land owner and the securing of a promotion

agreement; the promotion of the site; securing detailed planning

approval; construction; and the sale of the completed homes. The land

promotion companies emphasise that every step involves risks and

uncertainties, and Lichfields (2018) suggested that such risks embrace

Received: 15 July 2019 Accepted: 16 July 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2003

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