It’s that time of year, when Business Link Magazine invites the region’s business leaders to offer up their predictions for the year ahead.  It has become something of a tradition, given that we’ve been doing this now for over 30 years. Here we speak to Peter Garrett, Managing Director of Keyland Developments, the property trading arm of Kelda Group and sister-company to Yorkshire Water.

Setting global pandemic issues aside, I think I can confidently predict that the continuing scarcity of well-located residential and industrial development land means that we are going to continue to see increasing prices for both.

In fact, I think this could well be my prediction for every year going forward until the country faces up to and addresses land supply issues, which would involve having a grown-up conversation about development in the greenbelt and beyond.

With a development pipeline of over 8,000+ houses and 3.5m sq ft of industrial land all within God’s Own County, Keyland is clearly in a good position to benefit from increasing land values, but looking at the country as a whole, it is simply an exercise in futility to carry on trying to meet the needs of a growing population without properly planning where that population will live and work.

Leeds City Council has welcomed recommendations which could take it a significant step closer to finalising a major development plan that will help deliver high-quality homes and opportunities for local people. A planning inspector has provisionally backed the council’s proposal for 36 pieces of land to be retained within the city’s protected green belt under changes to Leeds’s Site Allocations Plan (SAP). The inspector has also provisionally backed a related proposal that would see an additional site at Barrowby Lane in Manston earmarked for employment use with the aim of further driving economic growth and job creation in east Leeds. The SAP, a key planning policy document which allocates land for future housing, employment, office, industrial and retail use, was adopted by the council in 2019 after a rigorous process of preparation and public consultation lasting six years. Under the original terms of the SAP, a total of 36 sites were removed from the green belt for possible housing use while a 37th – at Barrowby Lane – was removed from the green belt for a mix of potential housing and employment uses. The council then revisited the document following a legal challenge brought by Aireborough Neighbourhood Forum, with the High Court ruling last year that all 37 sites should be temporarily removed from the SAP and returned to the green belt pending further examination by the national Planning Inspectorate. The remainder of the SAP – which covers hundreds of sites across the city – was unaffected by the court ruling. Work conducted by the council with developers and landowners subsequently found that, due to the changing nature of local land supply, Leeds would in fact be able to more than meet its housing requirements for the period up to 2028 without the need for further green belt site releases. Using those findings, the council drew up a series of proposed modifications to the SAP that were submitted for examination by the Planning Inspectorate in March this year. The Planning Inspectorate has now agreed that, subject to public consultation, the council can retain the 36 housing allocation sites in the green belt and switch Barrowby Lane’s status from housing and employment to solely employment. The council’s executive board yesterday approved a six-week public consultation on the proposed changes. Once the consultation has taken place, the Planning Inspectorate will consider any responses received and prepare a report. This in turn, it is hoped, will allow the council to confirm the modifications, giving it a fully adopted and up-to-date SAP. Councillor Helen Hayden, Leeds City Council’s executive member for infrastructure and climate, said: “The Site Allocations Plan has been a massive undertaking for the council and one that will play a central role in shaping the future of our city. “We are committed to doing everything we can to deliver the kind of homes and jobs that people in Leeds need and deserve, and this document will help us achieve that through the weight it carries in the determination of planning applications. “It’s really encouraging, therefore, to see us getting closer to a position where it can be fully adopted by the council and bring more certainty to residents and investors alike.” The council’s original work on its SAP involved carefully assessing sites throughout the city and deciding which were the most appropriate and sustainable to allocate for development, in accordance with local and national policy. The plan was the subject of independent examination by government-appointed planning inspectors, who found it sound and legally compliant. The council’s proposed modifications are set against a background of considerable housing delivery in Leeds on brownfield sites, with 4,200 new homes currently under construction in and around the city centre. This is the highest number of new homes under development in and around Leeds city centre since the global financial crisis of 2008. In its legal challenge, Aireborough Neighbourhood Forum claimed the council had acted wrongly in its approach to releasing four green belt sites in Guiseley and Yeadon, and by later adopting the SAP on the basis of that specific approach. Four grounds raised in the claim were rejected or not allowed to proceed by the judge in the case. The claim was allowed on a further three grounds. Local authorities are required by the National Planning Policy Framework to maintain a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites.

It’s that time of year, when Business Link Magazine invites the region’s business leaders to offer up their predictions for the year ahead.  It has become something of a tradition, given that we’ve been doing this now for over 30 years. Here we speak to Kenton Robbins, Managing Director at PFF Group. We all worked tirelessly through 2021, focussing on the belief that 2022 would hail a return to the good times we remember. COVID-19 would be a thing of the past and the New Year would be an opportunity for us all to get back to normal. Yet, as I write we are heading into a ‘soft lockdown’ with a return to working from home being advised by the Government and mask wearing once again as fundamental as coffee and tea! 2022 is going to be the hardest year yet of this pandemic for business. We are staring down the barrel of inflation and supply chain shortages, the like of which we haven’t seen for many years. Energy prices will continue to be the lead item on boardroom agendas through 2022 as we face the greatest increase in wholesale marketing pricing in a generation. Those that have not hedged or have an ability to do so will face profitability challenges based on energy increases alone. Businesses based on a sourcing model of importing cheap goods from across the globe will see their margins eroded like the cliff sides of the East Coast unless they drive significant price increases to their customer base to offset their increased costs. The availability of everyday items we have all taken for granted throughout our lifetimes will soon be something of a fond memory. You only need to walk the aisles of a B&Q store looking for Far East sourced electrical sockets to see an issue that historically would have had the buying dept in a tailspin (incidentally, if any readers have a three-way switched Georgian brass effect socket going spare, I’ll pay good money, no questions asked)! We have spent months focussed on the Northern levelling up debate only to miss the much more significant global levelling up issues right under our noses. As much as I am an advocate for balance between the North and South, it should not distract us from the bigger picture which could be the driver for a year of positive change for UK plc. This coming year will see a huge opportunity for British business to fill the gaps which historically have been filled through so called ‘value’ global sourcing policies, aka ‘cheap’ products. We have to educate the British consumer as to the benefits of buying British and to look beyond buying solely on price – quality and price equals value. British manufacturers are world-leading innovators and produce quality products here in the UK, supporting domestic jobs, as well as the environment. I predict that 2022 will be the year that sees capitalisation of the UK manufacturing sector which will step up to the mark and establish itself in the mind of the domestic consumer as the value driver of the UK economy. 2022 should be the year we all make a choice to invest in ourselves, our country, our products and our planet’s future sustainability by buying the things we make well on our own doorsteps. After all charity starts at home and if there was ever a year that we should look to support ourselves, it is 2022.