Tories urged to open green belt to housing
Think tank paper says restrictions on buffer zones are impeding attempts to stem crisis in new homes
THERESA MAY is being urged to find the “political courage” to drop her opposition to building on green belt land to help tackle the housing crisis.
In a new paper, Simon Clarke, a Tory member of the Commons Treasury select committee, describes progress on building new homes as “painfully slow” and says current restrictions imposed on the buffer zones have become the “central obstacle”.
The paper, published by Freer, a new Conservative think tank, proposes relaxing rules on building homes within half a mile of railway stations – areas that are likely to be in high demand and are already well served by transport links. This, says Mr Clarke, would free up land for at least 1.5 million new homes.
The proposal is understood to have the backing of several senior ministers.
His paper comes after Sajid Javid, now the Home Secretary, privately lobbied Philip Hammond to include a similar proposal in last year’s Budget. The move was blocked by Mrs May, whose Maidenhead constituency sits in the green belt outside London.
Her aides believe that MPs representing similar areas would resist any relaxation of green belt policy for fear of a backlash among traditional Conservative supporters.
In his article below, Mr Clarke, a former aide to Dominic Raab, the Brexit Secretary, states: “Many of my Conservative colleagues, including the Prime Minister, have long campaigned against changes to the Green Belt for perfectly legitimate reasons, and opposition to new development runs deep in many constituencies. But we must look at the wider picture.”
His plan, he says, will still leave 98 per cent of green belt land untouched, but such change “will require immense political courage”. He points out that the Government is some way off its target of building 300,000 new homes per year and it is “far from clear that these new homes are being built where they are needed most urgently”.
In the Freer paper, Mr Clarke insists the green belt is an “arbitrary and increasingly damaging holdover” from 70 years ago, when the policy was enshrined in the Town and Country Planning Act to contain town and city sprawl.
The Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP says “the green belt does not, as most people might reasonably assume, correlate with ‘green’ or ‘environmentally protected’ land” such as national parks and areas of outstanding national beauty.
“A recent review found that up to 11 per cent of the UK’s brown field, or previously developed, land, falls within green belt land.
“About a third of all of green belt land in England is actually intensive agricultural land.”
The paper states: “We should lift restrictions on new house building within half a mile of existing stations (railway, underground, and trams) – while protecting environmentally valuable land – so we can address our homes crisis with the seriousness it deserves.”
Mr Clarke, a former city solicitor, suggests introducing a new “green belt guarantee” to enshrine a pledge that designated land will not drop below a level of 35 per cent of the entire sprawl of England. Last month the Campaign to Protect Rural England warned that green belt was disappearing at an “alarming rate” with the equivalent of 5,000 football pitches lost between 2011 and 2017 because of a relaxation of planning laws.
Freer was launched in March by Liz Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury, who spoke last month of a “need to open up more land for building”.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Housing said: “While we remain intent on building the homes our country needs, the Housing Secretary has been clear that this does not mean building all over our green belt.
“After a full public consultation and consideration, the Housing sScretary published the revised National Planning Policy Framework in July. This clarifies and strengthens the protections provided to the green belt.
“We have no plans to alter these.”