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When it was first unveiled earlier this year, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill (PIB) received a slew of negative headlines, the most prevalent being those around new compulsory purchase (CPO) powers.

It was suggested that these would give local authorities carte blanche to buy up large tracts of farmland without having to pay a premium, often referred to as ‘hope value’, above agricultural values.

However, our dedicated CPO and compensation teams are of the view that those fears seem overblown. The CPO process is expensive and time-consuming, so it is still only likely to be used as a last resort.

The main driver behind PIB is to make it easier for the government to move closer towards hitting its ambitious target of building 1.5 million new homes in its first term.

A survey of property industry players by our Residential Development Research team finds little confidence that this will be achieved, even though PIB promises more resources for local authority planning teams.

Last year’s revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) had already opened the possibility of building on greybelt land, a new term for land that does not serve three of the five purposes as defined within Annexe 2 of the NPPF, these three purposes being to:

1. ‎Check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas
   
   
2. Prevent neighbouring towns from merging into one another
   
   
3. Preserve the setting and special character of historic towns 

The NPPF also reintroduced housebuilding targets for local authorities, meaning they are under more pressure to identify sites for new developments, some of which could be owned by farms and estates, in their local plans.

Some of the measures in the PIB should also, theoretically, make it harder to block new developments.

How much of an impact these changes will make in Labour’s housing targets remains to be seen, and environmental groups are already lobbying against some of the PIB’s proposals that make it easier for developers to offset any damage they inflict on nature.

I think, however, that there is probably a two to three-year window for rural landowners to take advantage of the fact that many local authorities do not have a local plan in place, and we have already seen an upturn in planning applications.

Read more sector insights in the latest edition of The Rural Report, available here: