DD2114 Small Sites Small Builders Programme - Initial Project Budget

The GLA’s Housing & Land and Regeneration Teams are developing a programme to bring small publically owned sites forward for development in London and invigorate the small builders/developers sector.

The programme will provide a bespoke, simple and standardised process to deliver these sites into the market and will provide a standardised set of contracts to enable the delivery of residential-led development on these sites.

While larger development sites will continue to play a significant role in providing new homes in London, smaller sites and smaller builders have the capacity to make a significant contribution to new supply in London. The Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment (SHLAA, 2013) estimates capacity for around 100,000 units over the next ten years on sites of less than 0.25ha.

Despite this untapped capacity, smaller sites, including those in public ownership, are often underutilised and there are many barriers to these sites coming forward for development. Responding to this, GLA officers are working up a programme to tackle this issue. The aim of this programme is to devise and deliver a simple process which has the two interrelated aims of:

- Bringing small publically owned sites forward for residential-led development;

- Invigorating new and emerging sources of supply including small developers, small housing associations and community led groups.

Whist still at the scoping stage, it is anticipated that the programme will:

- Offer some resourcing support to public landowners to enable them to review their land portfolio to identify small sites which are available for disposal and to assess their development potential;

- Offer support in preparing sites for the market;

- Develop a simple, bespoke on-line portal for small sites to be marketed through, creating a live, centralised database of small public sites available in London;

- Encourage small builders to sign up to this portal in order to access the information packs and bid for public sites;

- Offer standardised criteria which bids can be evaluated against and a standardised set of contracts for the sale and development of the sites. The arrangements will not trigger the need for an OJEU procurement;

- Explore a range of approaches for land payment;

- Provide a limited amount of funding for capital works on small publically owned sites to unlock development.

A comprehensive soft market testing exercise will be undertaken in April/May with public land owners, small builders and their lenders to ensure the proposals meet their requirements. In summer, a programme pilot will be launched to test the process.

The programme is in the development stage and officers require £65,000 to obtain:

• External legal support to review and advise on the procurement and state aid implications of the programme proposals and draft heads of terms and the standard contract documents to be used in the programme;
• External property advice to review the contracts, test the land payment arrangements proposed under the programme and to deliver a series of soft market testing events in May.

This programme will be funded through the Growth Deal 3capital grant allocation of £13.4m which spans 2017/18 to 2020/21. This funding is not available until late April 2017 following LEAP endorsement and a Mayoral Decision. The advice described above is needed now in order to maintain momentum and drive the Programme forward.

It is not anticipated that the recommendations in this paper will have a negative impact on any groups identified under the Equality Act 2010.

This decision requests approval for an expenditure of £65,000 to obtain external legal and consultancy advice to support a programme for bringing small publically owned sites forward for residential-led development and invigorating the small builders/developers market.

The requested expenditure is earmarked from Housing & Land’s Management and Consultancy budget in 2017/18 financial year.

No other significant legal implications concerning the giving of consent require reporting which are not mentioned elsewhere in his report.