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The London Green Belt Council and CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England) Herefordshire have collaborated on a report into the impact of the Grey Belt Planning changes implemented in the 2024 National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)
CPRE recently commissioned a survey from ‘More in Common’ for CPRE that found nine in ten people want the countryside protected. Note this was also highlighted locally by the responses to the recent workshops related to the development of the new local plan.
CPRE point out that nationally there are 1.4 million houses which have obtained planning permission since 2007 but are not yet built, and there are thousands of empty houses in our towns and cities which could provide much needed accommodation for young families and young working people.
The introduction to the report also mentions that; before the general election in July 2024, Labour Party leaders suggested that areas in the Green Belt could be developed instead of using vacant homes and vacant brownfield sites. Sir Keir Starmer drew attention to a redundant petrol station in Tottenham Vale and a car park outside Wolverhampton. Then Secretary of State of MHCLG (Angela Rayner MP) said in a new statement (July 2024):
some low-quality Green Belt land will be freed up to become part of a 'grey belt' to allow new homes to be built..” (including) …”land on the edge of existing settlements or roads, as well as old petrol stations and car parks”
There was no mention of “low quality” Green Belt in the Labour Party Manifesto. The Government then published the revised NPPF in December 2024 and grey belt was introduced and defined allowing building on Green Belt land without restriction. Developers and their legal advisers immediately recognised the opportunity. Leading Kings Counsel (KC) acting for a developer in a recent planning appeal stated that: “The Government’s approach to the grey belt within the Green Belt is a seismic reversal of the policy test that applies to hundreds and hundreds of sites all over the country’. Another KC stated at the recent Marlow Film studios inquiry: “With the grey belt policy in play, contesting such an application becomes virtually impossible. …The new Labour Government policy reclassifying certain Green Belt land as grey belt essentially neutralises the traditional protections”.
The London Green Belt Council highlight that the the London Green Belt has been hugely successful as a Planning Policy in containing the capital and preventing urban sprawl. In 1940 London and Los Angeles were of a similar area. If London had been sprawled to the extent of Los Angeles, the metropolitan area would stretch from Brighton to Cambridge.
The Question is are we going to let the Greenbelt wither into irrelevance.
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