4 minute read
“Councils should amend their green belts if local circumstances demand it”
Before we begin, we appreciate that there are differing views on the Green Belt and we respect all of them. However this blog is based on Sigma Strategic Land’s business needs and we also appreciate that other SME developers may well hold other views.
The Green Belt is a longstanding and hotly contested issue in England. Dating back to the 19th century, the Green Belt’s formal role was established in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and has been largely guarded ever since.
As a development business, SSL considers that The Green Belt’s measured release is required to help solve the housing crisis. There have been recent forecasts about the Government’s projections of 300,000 homes per year now being expected in 2032, compared to the originally stated mid -2020s. Such a shift is notable, and forms a sizeable delay.
Green Belt and the Standard Method
The position with the Green Belt has become more urgent since the recent publication of the standard methodology which focuses on urban centre growth and a general reduction in overall housing numbers elsewhere compared to the public consultation version published during Summer 2020 (the so-called ‘mutant algorithm’).
The issue being that an increase in housing densities of 35% in urban areas is widely expected to be unachievable and this will lead to a shortfall in housing delivery. The preservation of the Green Belt when set alongside the significant increase in residential delivery in urban areas forms an undoubted tension that will have to emerge and be debated in the not-too-distant future. We will have to wait and see.
In cases such as Brighton and Hove which is bounded by sea to the south and South Downs National Park to the north, it is difficult to see how housing increases of over a third can be delivered. With historic under-delivery happening to date in this Authority and the application of a 20% buffer applied to their Objectively Assessed Need through the Housing Delivery Test, even the existing housing targets appear challenging to meet, irrespective of any further increases now expected. Tough times ahead.
Whilst non-Green Belt edge of settlement sites appear to be the next obvious step in meeting these requirements, there is merit in raising the spectre of Green Belt revision in the same breath. After all, the Green Belt is anything but green. There is close to 7% development on Green Belt land with over half of this accounted for by roads and other transport infrastructure. Residential buildings account for just 0.3% Green Belt land. Certainly very surprising statistics.
We have recently seen in the preparations of the London Plan, a strong disinclination for a London-wide Green Belt review, despite one being urgently needed. Given that the London Plan forms something of a trailblazer for other Authorities, it is shame that this bold step was not taken.
What next?
SSL sees cautious Green Belt release for residential development as something that is urgently needed, provided it does not compromise its 5 purposes stated in the NPPF. The careful review and release would be a more adept response to housing delivery rather than laying the problem at the door of the 20 largest cities (London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Leicester, Coventry, Bradford, Nottingham, Kingston upon Hull, Newcastle upon Tyne, Stoke-on-Trent, Southampton, Plymouth, Derby, Reading, Wolverhampton, and Brighton and Hove).
The driver for urban centre regeneration and redeveloping brownfield sites is abundantly clear. Creating sustainable communities in places equipped to deal with them appears logical and at the very heart of the NPPF. The Government has also gone on record as saying it wants urban areas to be ‘renewed and strengthened’ following the pandemic. There’s some way to go here.
Measured release of the Green Belt
Yet here’s the rub: there are plenty of Green Belt settlements that have strong sustainability credentials and do not perform strongly against the Green Belt purposes.
Taken in this light, the real question is not whether the Green Belt is working effectively, but rather does Green Belt policy create problems elsewhere in terms of delivering housing need? Could it be the case that one is driving the other? The tensions between the two national planning objectives does need to be reconciled.
One consequence of this could be that housing delivery is pushed out to the most sustainable edge of city or urban area locations. With the scaling down of the standard method figures from those published in Summer 2020, it seems slightly at odds with the bold changes being proposed in the Planning Reform Package.
Who blinks first – the Government or the Local Authorities who facing mounting housing pressures? Will it simply delay much needed housing delivery?
Change has been very slowly coming from Local Authorities with a 1% decrease in Green Belt release since 2006. There has been a decrease of 3,290 hectares (0.2 per cent) of Green Belt in England between 31 March 2018 and 31 March 2019. The Green Belt now sits around 16,158km2 as of March 2020 according to a Briefing Paper (00934, 20 November 2020) prepared for the House of Commons.
Then the Parliament session of 14th June 2021 happened. Christopher Pincher, Minister for Housing, stood up and made it quite clear that there will be no strategic review of the Green Belt as part of the planning reform package.
“We are committed not only to protecting the green belt but to enhancing it, and those protections will remain in force when we bring in planning reforms. I can assure you, Mr Speaker, that we will not be taking the advice of the Select Committee, which suggested that we should undertake a wholesale reform of the green belt. We have committed to protect it, and so we shall, because only in exceptional circumstances may a local authority alter a green-belt boundary, using its local plan and consulting local people on where essential new housing should go, and it needs to show real evidence that it has examined all other reasonable options before proposing to release the green belt. We are committed to the green belt, and we will fight for it”.
This was clearly very disappointing news. The vision and bravery of the White Paper required an accompanying temerity in the face of the sacrosanct designation. Perhaps one of the most radical elements of the planning reform package and a way of unlocking delivery would be a strategic review of the Green Belt.
After all, there has historically been references to one. Most notably, there was a clear intent and almost clarion call to review the Green Belt in the Fourth Report prepared by the House of Commons Committees and Local Government Committee in 2015:
“In our opinion, the green belt has for many years played an important part in preventing sprawl and ensuring settlements retain their distinct identity. The NPPF is right to say that it should only be altered in exceptional circumstances. Certainly, councils should not look to alter the green belt when making individual planning decisions. This does not, however, mean that the green belt should stick forever to its existing boundaries. Councils should amend their green belts if local circumstances demand it. In local plans, councils set out a strategic vision for their area. It seems to us sensible that, as part of this process, they examine their green belts and consider whether they are fit for purpose and whether adjustments to the size and boundaries should be made. We encourage all councils, as part of the local planning process, to review the size and boundaries of their green belts.
This was not taken up with any gusto and the situation we find ourselves in today is very different. Green Belt is strictly guarded. Yet sometimes it can be in the summation of constraints that makes housing delivery so difficult to achieve at a strategic level without its cautious release. There is also an absence of strategic plans in which to deliver the housing need where it is at its greatest.
After all, where does an Authority reasonably go when it is predominantly washed over by Green Belt? In this and so many other cases, Green Belt can have the effect of stifling the ability to bring forward development where it is most needed or wanted. It is blind to the social need for delivering affordable housing and pays no regard to the affordability index.
It is interesting to ponder that Green Belt release delivered through Local Plans can and will translate into pressure at a regional and then national level, rather than the other way round. If there are sufficient LPAs that look hard at their Green Belt for small-scale and measured release (but greater than existing levels) where they are not performing properly, then a more co-ordinated sea-change could be motivated at the national level.
An holistic and spatially considered release of Green Belt must be in preference to individual Authorities doing so on an ad hoc basis. An LPA that effectively maintains that it is so heavily constrained by Green Belt and other designations that it cannot reasonably meet its housing need will have to look in a more focussed way at Green Belt release, rather than to look across its boundaries, sub-regions or nationally for answers.
Where housing need is pressing, something has got to give.
We hope you enjoyed this article. SSL is currently looking to acquire Green Belt sites that form good strategic and sustainable opportunities. Please do contact a member of the Sigma Homes land team to discuss any potential sites.
Blog 8 is coming up next and lifts the lid on SSL’s Strategic Planning Manager, Damian Sullivan.
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