LOOKING AHEAD - ARE YOU GETTING THE RIGHT ADVICE?
Hugh Roberts - Director at Richard Roberts writes about the importance of planning ahead for future development beyond an immediate planning opportunity, the legal and technical considerations, and why planning for planning’s sake can cause more issues later down the line.
One of the biggest issues I find when stepping in to advise landowners if they have taken steps towards obtaining planning themselves, is the lack of forethought by advisors previously to the ‘bigger picture’ for retained land.
On a recent site visit for a large strategic site in the North East of England, the landowners had achieved a consent for a small development to the frontage of their site, using a local architect. They now wished to dispose of said consented site, and look to progress a medium term promotion with ourselves for the remaining land through the Local Plan process for 30-50 dwellings.
The immediate issue was that no thought had been given to the suitability of the access or infrastructure at that first planning application, so the capacity that could be achieved from that access or drainage solution was not suitable for the second, medium term proposal - the access could only accommodate 5 units! As you can well imagine after years of fighting on the first application plus tens of thousands of pounds spent on consultants fees, the landowners were not pleased that what they had finally won would actually restrict development potential of the wider landholding in the future!
Now it isn’t fair to blame the consultants, as often this is down to specialities – why would an architect know to consider whether the legal ability to deliver an adoptable access once the first site was sold – it is their job to design that phase, not look at legalities. This is why at Richard Roberts, we take a global approach which reviews each of those core objectives for us and the landowner at every stage from concept through to sale.
Ensuring that ‘phase 1’ of a longer term development plan includes a suitable access can be easy enough, but does the surface or foul water drainage solution allow for additional capacity to connect above that first consent? This can mean additional cost on the first phase, which needs to be balanced on the potential impact of residual land value. Having several options for each is crucial.
Does the legal mechanism meet the plans?
Ofcourse, just showing it on a plan does not mean that the purchaser is duty bound to construct said access road or infrastructure to that specification, therefore particular attention needs to be paid to the sales and legal process. Ensuring that any marketing specifically refers to the need to construct infrastructure to a certain specification and allow for connection is vital.
For example, stipulating that a developer must ‘construct a road to adoptable standard’ in order to achieve additional units in the future, does not mean that the developer is duty bound to have that road adopted. Therefore it is essential that they (and their successors in title) agree to consent to adoption if required to do so in the future.
At Richard Roberts, we ensure all this is sorted before a site even reaches the sale stage, usually with agreed wording to insert in heads of terms and detailed conversations with the legal team to ensure we know what we are trying to achieve.
Questions I always ask my team at each stage are:
1) Who is our target market for this site?
2) Are there enough of them to generate competition and best value for our client?
3) Is the site and design deliverable for the developer, whilst still retaining the infrastructure and access we need for future development on retained land?
4) What is the legal mechanism we are going to use to ensure those rights are enshrined in our client’s favour?
5) Is this the optimum use of the site to deliver our core objective – get the best return for our client.
Example of poor advice, leading to poor results
An example of ensuring you know what the end goal is, was a landowner in the midlands who had employed a local estate agent and planning consultant to get planning for 20 houses. They became fixated on getting any planning, as surely that is worth more right?
Unfortunately in this case it ended up with the landowner spending tens of thousands on fees to said advisors, for a consent which did not get the landowner what they wanted - maximum return for their mother who was in care.
The consent provided all dwellings as over 55s, and discount market value or affordable to get round an open space policy, with a drainage strategy that was prohibitively expensive. This no doubt meant it was an easy ride in planning terms, but the end product was unsaleable, or if possible for no more than they would have got agricultural value.
This is a particularly awful example and not representative of most consultants, but who won here? The surveyor/consultant who got more in fees for the work than the land was worth at the end, and the landowner was out of pocket!
At Richard Roberts, my team and I are committed to creating the opportunities for the future for our landowners, so that we can continue to work with them, achieving life changing results. A silver thread that runs through our promotion of sites is to ensure we are adequately planning for the future, working with the combined landowner/RR legal team to reserve for our clients a watertight position, whilst achieving the promotion objective – maximising value.
