Brownfield sites across England could create almost 1.5 million homes, with Greater London, the West Midlands and Greater Manchester home to the largest proportions in the current market, data from Searchland has revealed.
Searchland recorded all of the available land sites across England, revealing an estimated 26,670 brownfield plots located across the nation.
According to the CPRE, the average brownfield site could hold an estimated 53.6 housing units.
Brownfield building often requires a substantial budget to remediate a site before work can begin.
Rather than build on the green belt, the Government recently announced it would be turning its focus to the redevelopment of commercial brownfield sites into residential homes.
When it came to the greatest degree of all available brownfield land, London ranked top. The capital’s 4,392 brownfield sites account for 16.5% of the national total, and could deliver more than 235,000 new housing units.
The West Midlands was second, with 2,522 brownfield sites accounting for 9.5% of the national total, and the potential to deliver more than 135,000 homes.
With 1,971 sites in Greater Manchester, brownfield building could bring more than 100,000 new homes to the market.
Other counties boasting some of the largest levels of brownfield included South Yorkshire (4%), West Yorkshire (3.8%), Surrey (3.6%), Essex (3.4%), Dorset (2.9%) and Hampshire (2.8%).
The City of London (0.01%), Rutland (0.02%) and the Isle of Wight (0.3%) were home to the smallest proportion of brownfield sites in England.
Mitchell Fasanya, co-founder and CEO of Searchland, said: “Despite the Government’s best efforts to encourage brownfield building in recent years, it remains a complicated and expensive process and one that is unlikely to address the housing crisis in a meaningful manner.
“However, rather than tackle the controversial subject of green belt development head on, the Government has decided to take the easy way out and pursue a half-baked plan on converting previously developed land that is no longer being used, such as abandoned or underutilised industrial areas and obsolete commercial units.
“Unfortunately, as our figures show, brownfield development could benefit many major cities, but its availability is also far too lopsided towards certain counties to help address the issue of housing supply on a national scale.”
