Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, has said that if Labour win the next election they will allow the construction of housing on greenbelt land. Starmer said that councils will be given new powers to facilitate builders in using greenbelt land and that they should “back the builders, not the blockers”.
Speaking during an interview on BBC Breakfast, Starmer gave an example of homes being built on a playing field rather than a car park because the car park was technically within the greenbelt.
“We would make those tough choices and say to local areas, notwithstanding that it’s greenbelt, if it’s a car park or similar land which doesn’t affect the beauty of our countryside… then we’ll change the planning rules, we’ll give you the powers to do that,” he said.
He had previously made a similar statement while speaking at a meeting of the British Chamber of Commerce, where he argued that the current planning system and the barriers that exists to building were holding back growth and leaving the economy “stuck in second gear”.
In his speech he described “a generation and its hopes, an entire future, blocked by those who, more often than not, enjoy the secure homes and jobs that they’re denying to others”. He went on to say: “The evidence could not be clearer: there are 38 countries in the OECD, and we are the second worst when it comes to the effectiveness of our planning system”.
Under current planning rules in England, new buildings can only be constructed on greenbelt land in exceptional circumstances.
It appears that Starmer, with an election looming, is trying to take over what is usually seen as a conservative position in fighting for widened home ownership – something that is sure to appeal to many younger voters, especially the urban population who feel that, under the Conservatives, their chances of home ownership are slipping away due to constantly rising prices, a lack of supply and rising interest rates.
Our nation is in dire need of more housing stock, with 271,000 people, including 123,000 children, recorded as homeless in the UK and an estimated 1.6 million people on social housing waiting lists in England. This situation is not helped by the increasingly large number of migrants that we are seeing coming to the UK every year, putting increasing pressure on the housing system.
Building on greenbelt land is not the answer to these issues. Starmer has claimed that the power will be in the hands of local people to decide what housing is built, and where, to serve their communities’ needs, But in reality developers will game the system, especially on the fringes of the big cities where housing pressure is at its highest, to build housing that will be unaffordable for those in the greatest housing need.
The countryside charity CPRE says that official data suggests there is enough brownfield land for 1,061,346 housing units over nearly 21,000 sites, covering almost 25,000 hectares in the UK, though other estimates put the amount of land classified as brownfield in England as even higher, at an estimated 35,000 hectares. This land would be enough to cover a large part of our present housing needs without having to develop greenfield land.
We need to utilise this brownfield land before we start eating into the greenfield land that surrounds our cities, permanently losing some of our most beautiful countryside, damaging our farming industries at a time that we desperately need to be increasing our home-grown farm production and negatively affecting our already struggling wildlife.
Certainly we should see the construction of some housing in the countryside but that housing must be sympathetically developed and must be affordable housing for locals, not holiday homes for city dwellers or luxury housing for wealthy commuters.
Instead of relaxing planning rules on the greenbelt, the Government should be looking at encouraging the use of brownfield sites by, among other actions, increasing local authorities’ powers to compulsory purchase unused brownfield land, the estimated 225,845 long-term empty homes in the UK, and the the estimated 400,000 undeveloped plots that sit within the largest developers’ land banks.
Increasing funding to local authorities, housing associations and community groups that want to buy and develop these sites should be a priority, to increase the amount of social and affordable housing being built each year. Incentives should be offered to developers to carry out development on the brownfield sites as well, with a provision that the sites must have an increasingly large number of homes for social rent or truly affordable housing that will be price-stabilised to be only be resellable at a price that reflects the present buying power of the local population rather than becoming unaffordable when put on the resale market.
Our countryside is a precious and limited commodity. As they say: once it’s gone, it’s gone. While we do need more housing, we also need our countryside, which not only can give our nation increased food security but is also essential for our people’s mental and physical health and connects us to our ancestors who built this land and protected it for millennia.
