Did you see the launch of last months, CPRE “State of Brownfield 2025” report which delivers a powerful message: England has a minimum capacity for 1.41 million homes on brownfield sites, with at least 770,000 already benefiting from planning permission—enough to deliver more than half a million homes swiftly, without encroaching on greenfield or Green Belt land.
The #EIA applauds CPRE The countryside charity for spotlighting this record-breaking potential. Their work underscores that brownfield land is a “constantly renewing resource”, with potential to support the delivery of homes, regeneration, and sustainable development across all regions.
Yet, despite this opportunity, only 55% of identified brownfield housing potential have active permissions, revealing persistent obstacles in land remediation, planning delays, and viability for development.
EIA is challenging why is brownfield is not being delivered?
🏠 Planning bottlenecks remain a barrier: hundreds of thousands of homes are sitting with council permission, but are not proceeding to build-out.
Sites face complex remediation costs, impacting viability and delaying progress. This is not helped with the risk of LRR being at risk of being removed at the upcoming Chancellors budget in November.
🏠 Outdated brownfield registers persist—nearly 40% of Local Planning Authorities haven’t updated theirs in the past two years—obscuring both supply and momentum. This has been a constant frustration for EIA, where many brownfield sites do not even make the Brownfield register.
🏠 EIA calls on the Government to go further on Brownfield development to help its growth agenda.
🌍 Enshrine Brownfield-First in National Planning Policy: The NPPF must be amended to mandate that ALL brownfield sites receive primacy over greenfield allocations.
🌍 Plan-Making Powers: Grant local authorities stronger tools to sequence development, bring forward brownfield sites, and pause speculative greenfield projects.
🌍 Targeted Funding and Support: Redirect New Towns and Homes England programmes to underwrite remediation costs, viability gaps, and ensure delivery of genuinely affordable homes on brownfield land.
🌍 Transparent, Centralised Data: Implement a national brownfield register health check and integrate it into a unified Planning Data Hub to ensure open and reliable data.
Michael Lunn, CEO, Environmental Industries Association, comments:
“The potential of brownfield land is obvious—but its delivery is stalling under planning frictions, remediation costs, and fragmented data. The Government must intervene to catalyse this latent resource. We need a ‘brownfield‑first’ approach backed by targeted funding for clean-up and a central data infrastructure to track progress. Only then will brownfield become the backbone of sustainable housing delivery.”
A Challenge to Government
The EIA congratulate CPRE for their thorough analysis and advocacy. Now, we urge the Government to transform this untapped potential into action. By prioritising remediation support, regulatory clarity, and updated data, Ministers can unlock brownfield’s capacity to deliver high-quality homes, revive communities, and safeguard our green spaces.
Environmental Industries Association and its Members stands ready to support policymakers and industry in delivering a brownfield revolution.
For more information on the work of the Environmental Industries Association drop a line to our Membership team Membership@EIAssociation.co.uk
Remediation of Land and Groundwater – Environmental Industries Association
#CPRE #BrownfieldFirst #Remediation #ContaminatedLand #Land
Photo Credit: Soilfix