Green belt housing plan chopped back

A CONTROVERSIAL housing development has been significantly delayed and downsized – but will be a building site for more than 15 years, it has been revealed.

Thousands of residents campaigned against the decision to take the sprawling Langley plot in Sutton Coldfield from the green belt for inclusion in the city council’s Birmingham Development Plan (BDP).

The scheme was initially expected to deliver up to 6,000 new homes, 5,000 of which were due to be built by 2031, but the Langley Sutton Coldfield Consortium has confirmed that will no longer be the case.

Now it has emerged that:

The first home will not be delivered until 2023 despite the fact building work was originally expected to start last year.

The total housing capacity has been reduced to as low as 5,000.

Fewer than 3,000 homes are expected to be delivered by 2031, but the amount could be as little as 2,000.

Langley is not due to be completed until 2038 – the 16th year of its development.

Suzanne Webb, spokeswoman for the Project Fields campaign group who has since been elected as a Conservative councillor for Castle Vale, said: “The BDP has always lacked integrity. I am not surprised at the news that the number of homes to be delivered on Langley could be as few as 2,000. The original documented and known trajectory for Langley’s was always 3,000 homes by 2031.

“This figure was in an original version of the Birmingham Development

Plan but erased and changed to 6,000 – a point I raised to the Inspector at the Public Examination in 2014 but which was vigorously denied by developers and the council. I have been proven right.

“It is clear, as suspected, that the number of homes was artificially inflated to 6,000 to justify the release of the land from the green belt.”

Councillor Webb added: “With over 400 people attending public meetings, over 11,000 signatures on a petition and over 6,000 comments during the consultation, Project Fields, the campaign to protect the Green Belt, have been proven right.

“It is a bitter sweet victory as the land has now been released from the green belt and we are now at the mercy of a building site for 16 years.”