Increased Residential Capacity and Occupancy in City Centres

A consultancy team is required to support the Council in exploring policies to address the barrier of high land values in city centres impeding residential development, particularly around social and affordable housing. The areas looked at should include;

• Investigate possibilities of increasing Strategic Housing Investment Plan (SHIP) funding to support further housing development, targeted in and around city centres.
• Investigate mechanisms, such as Housing Grant, to increase confidence for councils and social housing bodies to take on challenging sites.
• Consider mechanisms by which we could jointly increase in brownfield development in city centres and adjacent neighbourhoods that help build demand for city centre uses.
• Investigate tools which could equip local government to have flexible planning policies and legislation to support and/or incentivise mixed-use development.
• Investigate opportunities to facilitate grant funding to improve public spaces to raise land values and residential demand – e.g. Mayfield in Manchester.
• Consider broader use of weighting scoring systems - e.g. London’s linkage of public transport accessibility scores to permitted housing density.
• Define clear ways to ensure that capital funding for city centres and other goals (e.g. housing, education, health) supports neighbourhood regeneration and/or creation.

The consultancy team will require experience in housing, economic development, local regeneration, property and planning and an ability to do this work across Scotland’s seven cities. The main areas of work will be:

• Quantifying existing city centre residential market for each of the cities
• Identifying constraints and opportunities
• Specific measures and geographical opportunities to facilitate residential growth
• Looking at good practice
• Analysing policy issues and trends
• Producing a series of outputs that are short, medium, and long term which address the issues listed previously

Lots

This procurement was divided into 1 lots, each awarded separately.

Tender Documents

• Scope of Requirements →