UK Edition
Britain’s failing high streets should be converted into 800,000 homes to solve the housing crisis, according to a think tank.
The Government should halt the creation of “ghost town and city centres” by turning buildings left empty by collapsed retail businesses into new homes, according to the Social Market Foundation.
Converting these vacant buildings would mean the government could achieve almost triple its annual housing target of 300,000 homes.
The report follows new laws laid out in Parliament yesterday that from September will allow developers to convert empty commercial blocks in town centres into new homes without full planning applications.
The laws are designed to help buildings be repurposed quickly and to reduce pressure to build on greenfield sites. They do not apply to pubs, libraries, and buildings essential to the community.
Coronavirus has accelerated the decline of the high street which began with the rise of online shopping, the SMF said. Retailers will continue to collapse as more people work from home, demand for office space is reduced and footfall in town centres drops.
The pattern of decline is inevitable, the report argued. The vacant buildings should instead be replaced with homes – which in turn would increase the footfall for the surviving local businesses.
If the government wrote off £80bn in local council debt, local authorities could invest heavily in urban renewal and use the opportunity to massively expand building of social homes, the SMF added.
But new government-funded research into permitted development rights, which allow the conversion of buildings such as offices and retail units into homes without full planning permission, was damning about the quality of homes created. It concluded that these properties “create worse quality residential environments than planning permission conversions”.
The report, by University College London and the University of Liverpool, found that homes built using PDR are typically smaller, with fewer windows.
Only 22.1pc of PDR homes meet the nationally advised space standards, compared to 73.4pc of dwellings built using full planning permission.
More than two thirds of all PDR homes were studios or one-bedroom flats, compared to just 44.1pc of typical new builds. In some schemes, apartments measured just 16 sq m – the equivalent of one-and-a-half minimum dimension car parking spaces.
The Government should designate areas at particular risk of falling into “urban decay” as Economic Growth Areas, the SMF said. These would offer tax incentives for companies moving into the area, contingent on hiring local people.
Scott Corfe, of the SMF, said: “Politicians pledging to save the high street are promising voters the impossible. Instead of claiming they can turn back the clock, leaders should aim to make inevitable change work better for urban centres and populations.
“Trying to prop up high street retailers facing long-term decline is not an act of kindness to workers or towns. It just postpones the inevitable and wastes opportunities to develop new policies to help workers and towns embrace the future.”