Housing and Regeneration Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord has put his finger on a very important point. I recall having a lot of conversations when the surplus National Health Service portfolio was transferred to English Partnerships about whether a multi-acre former mental hospital site was genuinely a brownfield site. If my memory serves me right—I think that this speaks to the noble Lord’s point about a partially developed site or a used site—we classified previously developed land or brownfield land as land on which rates or some residential charge had been paid, or which had plainly, over a period, been used for some commercial or other purpose that generated income and where the land had been productive. That is probably not an entirely satisfactory explanation, but it distinguishes between a partial development and something that was genuinely used for a long while. Practitioners increasingly interchange the terms ““brownfield land”” and ““previously developed land””. Brownfield has a connotation of post-industrial use—gasworks, or whatever. That is certainly the image conjured up in my mind, whereas previously developed land can have different connotations. We have had numerous Questions in the House, even in the short time that I have been here, about whether disused airfields, for example, are brownfield land, previously developed land or whatever. I am not sure whether that helps the noble Lord on the classification of ““brownfield land””, but, if my memory serves me right, it is land on which some kind of taxable charge or local charge has been made as a result of the land being used productively. I am not sure whether it takes us any further, but I think that that is the correct definition.