Starmer vows to build more homes on green-belt land

LABOUR would relax planning restrictions and allow more homes to be built on the green belt if the party won power at the next general election, Sir Keir Starmer has said.

The Labour leader said he would give local authorities and residents more power to build on green-belt land to meet local housing needs if they see fit.

In an interview with The Times, Sir Keir accused the Conservatives of “killing the dream” of homeowning for a whole generation.

If he became prime minister, he would go further than just reinstating mandatory housebuilding targets, he said, adding that the situation is currently “essentially broken”.

Regarding the taboo of housebuilding on the green belt, he said: “We need to have that discussion. But it cannot be reduced to a simple discussion of will you or will you not build on the green belt.

“This is why it’s important for local areas to have the power to decide where housing is going to be.

“Very often the objections that people have to housebuilding on the green belt are valid because the control by landowners and developers mean that the houses are proposed in areas where it’s quite obvious that there’s going to be a local concern.

“Give local authorities, local areas more power to decide where it will be and you alleviate that problem. So it’s not as binary or straightforward as ‘green belt, not green belt’. It’s how you direct where the housing will be.”

Rishi Sunak has previously pledged to defend the green belt against development.

He dropped mandatory housebuilding targets in December last year after a revolt by more than 100 Tory MPS, who threatened to back an amendment that would have forced the Government to abolish local housing targets.

Instead, the Government agreed to make the targets advisory.

Defending the move at Prime Minister’s Questions earlier this month, Mr Sunak said he had “put local people in control of new housing, and I’m proud that’s what I delivered within six weeks of becoming Prime Minister”.

He accused Sir Keir of wanting to “concrete over the green belt and ride roughshod over local communities”.