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Hundreds of thousands of houses could be added to the outskirts of London if Keir Starmer relax green belt planning rules, experts have predicted.
He Labour Leader this week laid out plans to give councils more power to approve residential development in protected areas around UK cities.
the metropolitan Green belt it was introduced in the mid-20th century in an attempt to prevent urban sprawl. It now covers an area roughly three times the size of London.
Following the Labor leader’s announcement this week, homebuilders and planning experts said houses and properties that relaxing tight controls on greenbelt development could add thousands of much-needed homes to the capital’s housing stock.
Nick Whitten, head of UK residential and living research at estate agency Hamptons, said not all of the metropolitan greenbelt was an “idyllic rolling countryside”.
“Much of it is bushland that surrounds London on either side of the M25,” he said. “London itself totals around 160,000ha of built environment; the Green Belt has more than 500,000 ha.
“Even freeing up just a small percentage of that green belt could open the door to building tens of thousands of new houses.”
New homes for key workers
Jamie Ratcliff, chief executive of the Network Homes housing association, said the capital needed “a lot more houses.”
“While the green belt was designed to protect from urban sprawl, it means too many people are forced to travel through it to live in a home they can afford,” he added.
“It makes no sense to protect service stations and aggregate shops at the expense of these people making valuable contributions to London’s economy.”
Zarin Mahmud, a researcher at the Central London think tank, said Starmer’s acknowledgment of the need for more local housing power was “encouraging”.
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer said there were examples where the green belt could be built (Yui Mok/PA)
/ PA file“London local authorities know best the housing needs in their areas,” he said. “We need them to have more of a say in the type and location of housing in their communities.”
Ms Mahmud added: “We already know the effects of the housing crisis in London: families’ increasing reliance on the private rental sector to find somewhere to live, problems of overcrowding, inadequate accommodation and skyrocketing rents.
“Building more new housing would reduce the risk of many households, including key London workers, being driven out of the city entirely. This is crucial for the future of London.”
Where should green belt development occur?
The Federation of Home Builders said 140,000 homes could be built on London’s fringes if just one per cent of the green belt were developed.
Abandoned sites near stations
“There are huge tracts of greenbelt land made up of debris or scrub with little ecological value and that could never be called beautiful,” a spokesman for the development agency said.
“It includes many previously used or abandoned sites within the greenbelt that could be redeveloped with housing, including sustainable locations near train or metro stations. Ultimately, policymakers must decide whether abandoned warehouses and underused parking lots are more important than London youth housing.
crossbar 2
Ben Simpson, director of planning consultancy Lichfields, said “significantly more than 100,000 homes” could be built in the metropolitan greenbelt if the right infrastructure were put in place.
“Previous proposals about crossbar 2 contemplated the possibility of delivering up to 150,000 new homes outside the main urban center of the capital,” he said.
“Those broad locations, therefore, would have been north-east London in the Upper Lea Valley, as well as south-west London around Chessington.”
Although the pursuit of the Elizabeth Line has been on hold since the pandemic decimated transport funding, Simpson said this or other schemes could eventually come forward to serve new development.
“The question is where capacity improvements can best be made to allow significant volumes of new development to be served, and how does that mesh with the quality and availability of land in the greenbelt.”
Growing Green Belt Cities
David Fell, a senior Hamptons analyst, said the metropolitan greenbelt had created urban sprawl in home county towns such as Aylesbury, Chelmsford and Crawley.
“The relaxation of the green belt opens up the possibility of both an expansion of London itself, along with [growth of] the cities in the green belt outside the capital, which have not seen much development since World War II,” he said.
But he added: “Politically, the expansion of London within its current boundaries is probably the most likely option. The profile of suburban London has changed in the last decade, with more tenants than there used to be, along with an increase in support for housing construction.
London could ‘end up being the size of Los Angeles’
But relaxing planning rules in the green belt is not necessarily the vote winner the national Labor Party might hope for.
The once secure Conservative Chesham and Amersham seat converted to Lib Dem in a by-election in 2021, a change partly attributed to planning reforms proposed by the government at the time.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was “committed” to protecting London’s green belt.
“It fulfills a number of vital functions, including mitigating the impacts of the climate crisis and protecting the green spaces that Londoners depend on,” a spokesperson for the mayor said.
“The Mayor believes that where greenbelt construction is allowed, it should be very limited and the London Plan is clear that greenbelt boundaries should be changed only in exceptional circumstances.”
Sarah McMonagle, head of external affairs for rural charity CPRE, said the green belt was “properly protected”.
“It’s the vital field next to millions of Londoners,” he said. “It also helps stop urban sprawl. If we didn’t have the green belt, London could end up being the same size as Los Angeles.
“This is why the government must introduce a genuine brownfield first approach to new housing so that we can recycle our previously developed land and build affordable housing close to the infrastructure and amenities people need. In exceptional circumstances, the national planning policy allows some development.
“What we shouldn’t do is waste our green belt with big executive home developments that ordinary people can’t afford.”
Starmer told the BBC this week: “We are going to back the builders, not the blockers.”
He added: “Planning rules don’t work, we need to give local areas more control over where construction takes place and create development corporations as the vehicle to push homebuilding.
“We all want to protect the green belt. [But] we have to face the fact that we already built parts of it. In Maidstone, the houses were built on a playing field instead of a car park which was technically on the green belt.
“We would tell local areas, regardless of whether it’s a greenbelt, if it’s a parking lot or similar piece of land that doesn’t affect the beauty of our landscape, we’ll change the planning rules and give them powers to [allow development].”
The Labor leader said his measures would help tackle rising rents by increasing residential supply, and promised more housing policy “within a few weeks”.
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