Call for more brownfield land in England to be used for new homes

More brownfield sites should be used in England to build affordable homes with sufficient land available to develop more than a million new houses, a new report suggests.

Also, current plans to build 460,00 homes on land released from the green belt will not help young people get onto the housing ladder, according to the annual State of the Green Belt report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

Overall, the report says that the green belt remains under severe pressure, despite Government commitments to its protection and 78% of planned developments on greenfield sites do not fall under the definition of affordable.

It points out that moving green belt boundaries when reviewing local plans makes it easier for local authorities to release land for housing, but is only supposed to take place under ‘exceptional circumstances’ and claims that there is a ‘strategic shrinking’ of the green belt.

The report also says that building on the green belt is not solving the affordable housing crisis, and will not do so. Last year 72% of homes built on greenfield land within the green belt were unaffordable by the Government’s definition.

The CPRE warns that this release of land looks set to continue, as one third of local authorities with green belt land will find themselves with an increase in housing targets, due to a new method for calculating housing demand and the London (Metropolitan) green belt will be the biggest casualty.

Tom Fyans, CPRE director of campaigns and policy, said:

‘We are being sold a lie by many developers. As they sell off and gobble up the green belt to build low density, unaffordable housing, young families go on struggling to afford a place to live.

‘The affordable housing crisis must be addressed with increasing urgency, while acknowledging that far from providing the solution, building on the green belt only serves to entrench the issue.

‘The Government is failing in its commitment to protect the green belt, it is being eroded at an alarming rate. But it is essential, if the green belt is to fulfil its main purposes and provide 30 million of us with access to the benefits of the countryside, that the redevelopment of brownfield land is prioritised, and green belt protection strengthened.’

The CPRE is urging the Government and councils to ensure that brownfield land in England is redeveloped before any more greenfield land is released as local authorities with green belt land have enough brownfield land for over 720,000 homes, much of which is in areas with a high need for housing and existing infrastructure.

In addition to a push for a genuine ‘brownfield first’ approach to development, the CPRE are also calling on the Government to retain its commitment to protect the green belt by establishing long term boundaries and to halt speculative development in the green belt.

It is also calling for the development of clear guidance for local authorities on housing requirements to protect designated land and for the creation of new green belts where local authorities have established a clear need for them.

However, according to Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the concept of the green belt is widely out of date and the only meaningful way to solve the issue of unaffordable housing is to liberalise the planning system and build more homes.

Mark Littlewood said:

‘Much of the land protected by green belt regulation is not environmentally valuable or scenic in the first place. Over 35 per cent of London’s green belt is intensively farmed agricultural land, yet there is opposition to transforming these sites into residential areas.

‘In essence, we are prioritising the protection of dump sites over the opportunity for young people to get on the housing ladder. Since 1970, average house prices in the UK have risen by a staggering four and a half fold after inflation. No other OECD country’s experience has even come close. The UK’s housing crisis must be addressed, and even mild embrace of planning liberalisation is a step in the right direction.’

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