10 COMMENT
High hopes for low value Green Belt
David Churchill
David Churchill, partner at estate agent Carter Jonas, argues that a more fl exible approach to releasing low value Green Belt land could help meet housing targets without compromising the countryside, or sustainability goals.
BUILDING ON THE EXISTING GREEN BELT WILL ONLY EVER BE PART OF THE SOLUTION
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T
hroughout the General Election campaign, the Green Belt was central to the debate about the housing crisis. The Government has committed to building 1.5 million homes during this Parliament. As part of the means of achieving this, it has pledged to adopt a strategic approach to the use of Green Belt land as part of the delivery solution, including building on poor quality, so-called ‘Grey Belt’ land.
In a research report, ‘Rethinking the Green Belt,’ Carter Jonas has moved the debate on a stage, by considering what land might be used and how it might be released. The analysis takes an in-depth look at the subject, determining to what extent land within the Green Belt differs from land outside it; how much of the Green Belt is protected by other
(and perhaps more appropriate) designations, and exploring options for using Green Belt land in order to achieve more sustainable patterns of development.
The rhetoric surrounding the Green Belt can be powerful – and politically charged. Take, for example, the common claim that building on the Green Belt amounts to ‘concreting over the countryside’. While some Green Belts do contain larger proportions of environmentally protected or publicly accessible land, there is also a signifi cant amount of land with little environmental or amenity value – now coined the ‘Grey Belt.’ This raises the question of whether it is necessary to protect so much land, and whether greater fl exibility within the Green Belt would allow for a better allocation of land.
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