Court agrees that small sites are exempt from Section 106 payments

Court agrees that small sites are exempt from Section 106 payments

Self builders are set to save £1,000s thanks to a recent decision on Section 106 Planning Obligations. On 11 May the Court of Appeal Civil Division reversed last year’s High Court decision to quash the exemption from s106 planning obligation payments for small sites.

The exemption, first introduced by Minister for Housing and Planning, Brandon Lewis MP, by Ministerial Statement on 28 November 2014, freed self builders from the unpopular s106 planning obligation payments which required them to divert £10,000s from their budget for a new home, into a payment towards roads, schools, affordable housing and other local authority infrastructure projects.

NaCSBA, the National Custom and Self Build Association, campaigned for the exemption on the grounds that the payments – designed to mitigate the impact of major development on local infrastructure – were disproportionate to the impact of small developments, especially single self build homes and failed to recognize the exceptional costs of developing a small site.

The exemption, applied to sites in England of 10 new homes or less (five in designated rural areas), was welcomed by self builders and small housebuilders alike. Some local authorities, however, disagreed with the exemption and on 31 July 2015, the judge in a High Court case brought by two neighbouring authorities, Reading and West Berkshire, found the exemption unlawful, and it was quashed just eight months after its introduction leaving many self builders in indefinite limbo.

The High Court Judge’s ruling clearly contradicted the intentions of the Government and its stated commitment to boost housebuilding, help smaller local housebuilders and double the size of the self build sector to 20,000 homes a year by 2020. NaCSBA immediately launched a campaign for the reintroduction of the exemption and in August 2015, DCLG was granted leave to appeal. The High Court’s decision to quash the exemption has been reversed with immediate effect. The Government is expected to update its guidance accordingly.

“NaCSBA welcomes the Court of Appeal ruling,” says Chair, Michael Holmes. “This exemption, together with the existing exemption from the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), brings us one step closer to NaCBSA’s stated aim to make a high quality, sustainable, affordable individual home an option for the many and not just the few.

“Despite this victory for those who want to build their own home, it is still possible that the original appellants may seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.”

Sheffield’s office market shows value with growth potential

Sheffield’s office market shows value with growth potential

The latest Knight Frank regional office market review is reporting that 2016 was a relatively quiet year for the local office market in terms of occupier take up. 63 deals completed compared to 84 in 2015 with a total of 201,500 sq ft being occupied, 36% below the 10-year average. Deals included 9,500 sq ft letting to leisure and gaming company Rank Group at Navigation House in a relocation from London and 7,840 sq ft letting to Zoo Digital at City Gate. Headline rents stagnated at £23.00 / sq ft but hopes are high that this will push out to £24.00 / sq ft in 2017.

On the office real estate investment front the picture looks better with a substantial increase in deals being completed. Around £85m of key deals with prime yields at around 6.5% went through in 2016.

Vulcan House occupied by the Home Office at the J2 Riverside Exchange was bought by Spanish investor Trinova Real Estate for £30.9m with initial yield of 6.78%. The 75,600 sq ft Riverside East office let to Irwin Mitchell util 2017 was sold for £23.4m to 90 North Real Estate on behalf of Arzan Wealth and Sidra Capital,indicating a net initial yield of 6.73%. Pramerica Real Estate Investors bought Derwent House for £8.7m on behalf of the The John Lewis Pension Fund.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in a global market over two thirds of these purchases were by overseas investors. Although the volume is small compared to centres like Leeds and Manchester it does show that Sheffield can offer value on the world stage with quality real estate deals and considering that yields were at 5.00% in 2007 there is plenty of room for growth in the coming years.

Vertical farming may be coming to our cities

Vertical farming may be coming to our cities

Vertical farming may be coming to our cities

Living in a nation with a supermarket on seemingly every city street corners we’re prone to forgetting the cost of bringing fresh food to the market. Improved logistics has enabled us to bring fresh edible for from the four corners of the planet.

It might have started with bananas ripening on boats travelling from the West Indies but there’s no stopping crates of kumquats heading from Asian farms to the most humdrum village shops via a complex network of trucks, chilled warehouses, railways, aeroplanes and ships. That all costs money and importantly, non renewable resources.

A new breed of farmer is appearing that is determined to reduce the miles travelled from farm to table. Using hydroponic growing systems which grow almost anything without soil they are finding ways to utilise the vertical instead of the horizontal. These new farms need a fraction of the land to produce their produce, and have enabled the industrialisation of food growing in a way that does away with traditional farming.

At the moment these farms are in the early stages and aren’t on the commercial scale that would make them viable alternatives, but as the methods mature they could become a common sight on the face of new buildings.

Sheffield’s Chief Executive on the housing crisis

Sheffield’s Chief Executive on the housing crisis

Sheffield’s Chief Executive, John Mothersole gives an excellent and realistic outline of the challenges facing cities as the supply of housing land shrinks, forcing down new-build completions and pushing up prices for buyers and tenants alike.

This will be a difficult issue to move forward with the inherent conflict between the need to build and the natural tendency we all have towards NIMBYism on our doorstep. Politics (or at least the need for politicians to keep voters voting for them) constantly gets in the way and while we all understand that our young people are finding it harder than ever to set up home, we don’t like the impact that means to our neighbourhood if it’s one that will see new homes.

Planning policy needs reform, but in the meantime we’ll need a shift towards reordering sectors of cities so that zones reflect the local needs today rather than the historic grain. We tend to stay within our comfort zones, only thinking of what an area is or has been, whereas we have got to remove the familiarity from the decision making process to see what somewhere can be soon.

That’s not a clear nod towards for brownfield development, since without the extensive and unpopular use of compulsory purchase powers the difficulties of site assembly will prolong matters by decades. Whilst initially attractive as a soundbite, brownfield development brings lots of problems, both technical and social, and most brownfield sites have a direct impact on more people than even a rural development does.

Alternatively, selective greenfield consents which complement adjacent brownfield sites can bring together usefully sized development plots that can deliver new homes over the next two to five years. These sites exist both on the edges of town and in the very heart of the urban grain, but it takes market expertise and a canny eye to see the potential that extends beyond an easily identifiable site. Council planners don’t tend to be very good at this due to the many constraints that they have to work under, but there are others out there who are expert at knitting together these schemes and they need an open mind and support from Town Halls.

With shortfall of hundreds of thousands of homes per year being built we really can’t afford to wait until community sensibility catches up. It’s impossible to pickle a community in a moment in time (and it’s a fallacy to imagine that even the prettiest village has existed forever) so the load needs to be shared. In doing so, it’s vital that people are involved and engaged in the process so that they clearly understand the issues and can be a part of the decision making process.

Multi-agency approach is vital so long as the overseers (especially planning committees) take on an enabling function rather than their traditional and control blocking functions. If we can achieve that we can provide decent and affordable homes for everyone.

A view into Sheffield from outside

It’s always wise to listen to outsiders opinion of a city. They have an insight that only detachment can bring,

Of course that doesn’t mean to say that they are always correct in everything that they say, but it’s important to understand external perceptions so that we can better plan for successful change and development (AKA regeneration) from within.

A recent article from Steve Parnell in the RIBA Journal expressed his views from a perspective that must have come from time spent in Sheffield. His references are immaculate, his sources are impeccable.

His conclusion is bleak and yet heartwarming, with a dollop of wisdom that a city like Sheffield can ill-afford to ignore at the moment.

(and if that doesn’t work for you, try The Road To Wigan Pier for a reminder that nothing changes)

Northern soul

It’s escaped pin-striped bling – now paradoxical Sheffield must grab its chances

Sheffield is a much loved city. It’s hard to know why, really. On the face of it, it’s pretty down at heel. Achingly so, if you believe the cliché. If you have no connection with the so-called Steel City, it probably brings to mind Robert Carlyle and co dancing to Hot Chocolate in the mid 1990s. And Sheffield is often chosen by TV mockumentaries as the typical northern post-industrial hive of inequity.

These portraits aren’t false. But they are one-sided – Sheffield is often also voted the happiest place to live in the UK. And Hallam is one of the richest boroughs in the country with allegedly its highest concentration of professionals.

The real paradox is how Sheffield’s locals manage to maintain such pride in a city which is, on the surface, pretty crap.

HS2 will not stop at Sheffield, but at its retail hub, Meadowhall. Ah yes, the ‘M’ word. That shopping mecca developed by a scrap metal dealer on the site of Hadfield’s massive Hecla Works using one of Thatcher’s Enterprise Zone non-plan deals. Nothing symbolises the shift from industrial production to post-industrial consumption more.

They say Meadowhall killed Sheffield city centre, but the councillors have done a pretty good job on their own, ever keen to raze any building of note in order to create a tabula rasa for ‘regeneration’.

Last week’s Sheffield Telegraph sported on its front page an ‘artist’s impression’ of the future of the Castle Market site. The markets designed by Andrew Derbyshire in the 1950s have had heavenly praise laid upon them by that Holy Trinity of architectural criticism, Ian Nairn, Owen Hatherley and Jonathan Meades (I may have made up the last one, but I’m sure he’d love it as much as Cedric Price did). But the site looks like a bouncy castle aside a grassy knoll fit for mediaeval battle re-enactments. That rumbling sound is Nairn turning in his grave as Sheffield Council’s cabinet member for business, skills and development, Leigh Brammall, dances on it.

Or maybe it’s the bulldozers demolishing more of the city centre which looks something like a ghost town, most of its traders being given their compulsory purchase marching orders. Down the Moor (the central pedestrianised shopping area), shops are empty or demolished. Last July, after years of indecision, developer Hammersons finally pulled out of negotiations to develop the New Retail Quarter, a Liverpool One style state-of-the-art privatised shopping precinct enveloping the city centre. Sheffielders’ response was a typical shrugged ‘it’s not for the like of us any road up’.

Actually, it’s given Sheffield a stay of execution and what could have been a city with all the character of the pin-striped bling of Leeds, now has a chance to be half decent. So what are Sheffield architects doing about this?

Building Fantastical Cities – on the street.

Building Fantastical Cities – on the street. · Credit: Tony May

A recent initiative of the Sheffield Society of Architects invited local practices to join a day-long charrette investigating the opportunity that the New Retail Quarter hiatus afforded. Councillors like Simon Ogden (head of city regeneration), Isobel Bowler (cabinet member for culture, sport and leisure), and Maria Duffy (interim head of planning) were invited for an end of day crit to see the proposals and comment on it. We all know that architects can get a bit heady when given some blank sheets of paper, coloured crayons, and an urban problem. But sometimes that’s what’s needed. The key idea that the decision makers should have taken away was based on Marcus Westbury’s ideas from Newcastle, Australia. Westbury recently visited the university to talk bottom-up, independent, cultural, and creative regeneration – that you need to attract people into the centre and then they will spend money there. If Meadowhall is going to be the retail hub, then the historic centre could be a culturally charged civic centre. Without battle re-enactments.

Few cities do festivals better than Sheffield with its generous archipelago of public spaces. It hosts the DocFest (claimed as the Cannes for documentaries), Grin Up North (England’s largest comedy festival), and Tramlines (an independent urban music festival). At festival time, the city feels relaxed, generous, friendly, open, creative, pregnant. Julian Dobson of Sheffield based Urban Pollinators comments that Blairite language like ‘New Retail Quarter’ misses the huge opportunity that presents itself to Sheffield to define the first of a new model of city centres rather than the last of the old. A centre promoting cultural and civic engagement might be such a model.

Director of RIBA Yorkshire Emma England says the Sheffield chapter is the most active in the region, due to the two universities being involved, the city being so willing to engage in its activities, and a more design conscious community. The large Sheffield practices, BDP, HLM, HCD and Bond Bryan, are also very supportive of its activities, and smaller practices such as Norton Mayfield Architects, which works mainly in London but is based in Sheffield, is also proactive in its engagement. They co-organised and hosted the Fantastical Cities workshop for children, for example, as part of Sheffield Design Week, where the road was closed in front of their studio and kids invited to design a fantastical city from cardboard, gaffer tape, bubble wrap, and various other off-cuts.

But the micro-practices really excite me. Those like Studio Polpo, set up as a social enterprise to plough its profits back into benefiting the city, working with Architype on larger p