Colour blind
We must build on brownfield land to protect green belt in local plans
As new ministers settle into their jobs, there is a huge amount of work to be done to “level up” every region in Britain. We must make progress in solving the housing shortage, but at the same time we need urgent action to preserve the environment and tackle climate change. How we reconcile these two issues on the ground in local areas comes down to the planning system.
Councils across the country are required to produce a local plan to decide where development will happen in their areas. If they don’t have enough sites in the existing built-up areas ready to develop, they allocate sites in the green belt for development. Yet at the same time there are thousands of hectares of brownfield sites, many left over from years of deindustrialisation in our cities, which lie derelict. The fact that councils therefore permit development in the green belt makes it even less likely that developers will regenerate the derelict sites. Residents are left feeling angry and powerless at this “Catch 22” situation.
Here in the West Midlands, we have tried to meet our housing numbers and think differently about where we build more houses and base our growing businesses. We have doubled the number of homes we are building to 17,000 last year, and the huge majority of these are on brownfield sites.
We have vast tracts of brownfield land that are derelict and, with the Government giving us the funding for the decontamination and site preparation, we work with local councils and housebuilders to build the homes. At a former sewage works at Friar Park in Sandwell for example, we paid to decontaminate the land, working with the local council’s planners, and now a developer is building 750 new homes.
We have also built new homes in our town centres, where units are falling empty or there is land that has been left vacant. Like Margaret Thatcher’s childhood home, living above the shop is looking like it will become more and more common in Britain today. These new homes will in turn breathe life back into the retailers of the high street.
Elsewhere, we are using investments in transport infrastructure to unlock housing sites, like the reopening of the rail line between Walsall and Wolverhampton. This work costs public money, of course, but given that these investments will pay back over decades, and the Government can borrow at low interest rates, aren’t we right to invest now and reap the economic and environmental returns for years to come?
With public investment and a “brownfield first” policy, we are making progress. The Government now has the chance to fundamentally reform planning law to make councils focus on brownfield sites first.
Firstly, when councils develop their local plans, they should be required to demonstrate that all brownfield sites have been brought back into use (even if they require public funding to be viable), and that the density of urban development has been maximised, before any green belt land is considered.
Secondly, after the local plans have been adopted, councils should have a duty to approve development on brownfield sites first, with any proposals for green-belt development blocked until they are the last possible option available. Any green belt sites allocated in the local plan should be held in reserve until there truly is no alternative.
To make this successful, the Government is right to use public money to regenerate derelict sites and bring communities back to life. With a substantial majority, a levelling-up agenda and a new team of delivery-focused ministers, the Government can get to work.