It’s open season on greenfield sites

News of another 1,500 houses planned for the outskirts of the city shouldn’t surprise us (Yet More Homes, Kentish Gazette, June 23).

Until the local plan is approved by the government inspector, it is open season on the greenfield sites around the city.

Common sense dictates that there should be a moratorium on major applications like these until the plan is in place.

Common sense is sometimes in short supply around Whitehall!

This government, like Tony Blair’s, is in hock to the liberal urban elites who know nothing of

the countryside and care even less. The construction industry bosses are numbered among those elites and they know their way around Whitehall.

Consequently, the government is persuaded that the only solution to the housing shortage is to make more land available and to tweak the planning system so that planning permission is easier to obtain.

However, research by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England demonstrates that the construction industry is sitting on enough land for about 600,000 houses, much of it with outline permission. Despite this large land bank, the number of new builds has been far lower than required.

CPRE has also found that there is enough brownfield land for 976,000 homes. Although developers prefer building on greenfield sites, CPRE found that large developments on brownfield land can take up to two years less from planning permission to completion than on greenfield sites.

If there is a housing shortage, then the responsibility lies with the construction industry.

The government must encourage the industry, preferably with a stick rather than a carrot, to utilise its land bank more responsibly and to give clear signals that the use of greenfield sites must be a last resort. Peter Osborne, Stour Street, Canterbury.