Doubling The Square Footage Per Acre with David Birbeck

In this episode, Paul sits down with David Birbeck, one of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to planning and development. He is the CEO of Design for Homes, a Housing Design Awards director, an Honorary Fellow of RIBA, HCA design board member, NHBC councillor and Housing Forum board member. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Despite the desperate need for housing in the UK, at some point, somebody will start a sort of anti-development lobby.
• Most authorities struggle to get their local plans adopted, so most will not manage to release a third more land.
• Cambridge was the first to redraw its green belt and broke the record for the most new homes built.
• If you get the design of low-level buildings right, you don´t need to build mostly flats to achieve 25 homes per acre. 
• Switching from traditional housing types and building a broader range of housing has been key to making a generous profit.
• Cambridge planners focus on community, character, connectivity and climate benefit, not the architecture.
• Redrawing developments with planning to improve density is already happening.

BEST MOMENTS
“We set up a series of ideas to improve housing and the government has adopted some of them.”
“Cambridge has become, by accident …. a laboratory for new housing ideas.”
“When you look at Great Knighton it's all coming in at a minimum of about 25 homes to the acre.”
“110 years later, we’re still working to a rule that’s about Edwardian sensibilities.”

ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-birkbeck-399b771a

ABOUT THE HOST 
Paul Higgs is a Chartered Planning and Development Surveyor with 40+ years' experience in land, planning and development and a 100% success track record in winning planning consents.
Paul undertook his first refurb project when he was just 17 and then worked his way up from labouring on building sites to becoming Head of Land for renowned plc housebuilder, Barratt Developments. He managed to escape the corporate world in 2002 to set up what is now a multimillion-pound award-winning property development company, Millbank Group. 
In 2013 Paul founded the Millbank Land Academy, the UK’s first training company dedicated to property development; to teach established and aspiring developers the insider secrets the big housebuilders don’t want you to know! 
Paul is also a founding investor and former board director of the industry-leading PropTech Co, LandTech, and has lectured on Advanced Development Valuations on the MSc Property Development at London South Bank University.
 
CONTACT METHOD
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-higgs
Millbank Land Academy: https://www.millbanklandacademy.co.uk
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paulhiggsofficial
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@InsidePropertyDevelopment