Starmer: Let’s be honest, we need to build on green belt

SIR KEIR STARMER has said politicians must be “honest” about the need to build on green belt land in order to deliver enough new homes.

The Labour leader is to reveal “five golden rules” for building on the green belt, which include prioritising areas of “grey belt” land such as disused car parks or scrubland.

Sir Keir, who declared himself a “yimby” at the Labour conference in October, has pledged to build 1.5 million homes over the next Parliament.

The pledge is a gamble for the Labour leader, who is relying on there being sufficiently widespread frustration at the fact that there are too few homes to meet demand.

He said: “Labour supports brownfield first policies. But we must be honest – we cannot build the homes Britain needs without also releasing some land currently classed as green belt. We’ll prioritise ugly, disused ‘grey belt’ land, and set tough new conditions for releasing that land.”

Labour has said its new class of “grey belt” land would be “poor-quality and ugly areas” of the green belt. An example is an area of Tottenham, north London, where a development was blocked because the site of a disused petrol station was designated as green belt.

The party has said brownfield land within the green belt would be prioritised first, then “grey belt” land. Genuine nature spots would be ruled out of building plans, while work would be done to improve existing green spaces and make them accessible to the public.

The approach is fraught with risk, with the Conservatives likely to characterise it as a threat to natural spaces in local communities. Labour has said new infrastructure would accompany house-building projects.

The rate of house-building has risen since the last election, with 202,300 homes started in 2022-23, compared with 187,870 in 2019-20. But the Government has fallen short of its manifesto commitment to reach 300,000 a year by the mid-2020s.

The number of planning applications received and granted is at its lowest level on record, having fallen by a fifth under Rishi Sunak, Labour analysis shows. Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, criticised the Conservatives for having “failed to distinguish genuine green spaces from ‘grey belt’ land that’s ripe for house-building”.

Richard Holden, the Conservative Party chairman, said: “Labour’s policy is to ignore the concerns and voices of local people.

“It is the same approach they took to Ulez and that is why they will fail.”