The free-for-all that’s wrecking our Green Belt
Tory MP Andrew Mitchell drew attention last week to the shocking devastation facing our countryside with the Government’s plans for more housing. But this is nothing new. In and around places such as Harrogate, there has long been a planning free-for-all. Houses are being built in places previously rejected by inspectors. And to slam through applications, villages are said to have ‘sustainable services’, even when none can be found and public transport is incapable of getting anyone to work before mid-morning, if at all.
Any development should not breach the Government’s National Planning Policy Framework, which assures that all development will be sustainable. In reality it is a destroyer’s charter writ large.
It states that our countryside helps hold ‘body and soul’ together but, intentionally or not, then demands that those places be made part of a competitive economy, by sprinkling if not smothering everywhere with factories, houses and roads. And planners have no qualms about cumulative development in air-pollution hotspots. They ignore reasons not to grant permission with impunity.
Theresa May is a woman of courage and principle and has promised to fight injustice and give back control over our lives. Surely she can intervene to make sure we have the development we need in more imaginative ways than building over the countryside, such as urging the rapid conversion of large houses into flats?
John Bradfield, Harrogate Andrew Mitchell advocates building on brownfield sites rather than the Green Belt. But brownfield sites offer smaller areas for development that are almost certainly contaminated. I also find that many objectors to building on agricultural land live in houses that were built on land that was once fields. They just want to stop the clock. We need houses both on agricultural land and in our cities, and the Government should remember that potential buyers have votes as well as NIMBYs.
Martin Lee, Birmingham Building on Green Belt land should be a criminal act. Builders are interested only in profit. Selwyn Cuff, Bovey Tracey, Devon It strikes me that HS2 could be a ruse to open up great swathes of land to development by stealth.
Terence Murphy, London