Has the Green Belt idea run its course? (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Has the Green Belt idea run its course?

3:40pm Wednesday 24th January 2007 in

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An independent think tank' report calls for the release of more green belt land for house building.

The Policy Exchange report, Best Laid Plans: How Planning Prevents Economic Growth, claims that current planning regulations have led to low supply, artificially-high housing prices, a sluggish economy and restricted social mobility.

The report's publication coincides with Yorkshire and Humber Assembly's proposed Regional Spatial Strategy (RPS), due to become law this year.

The RPS says that Bradford, along with Kirklees and Calderdale, needs to release enough land for more than 73,000 new homes across the three districts in the next 14 years.

Planning Minister Baroness Kay Andrews said developers should build on brownfield land - former industrial sites - first but added that "in some areas it may be necessary to bring forward other sites if we are to meet our local demand".

This is where the report by the Policy Exchange think tank comes in - a little too timely, a little too conveniently perhaps.

In a foreword to the report Simon Wolfson, chief executive of Next plc, says that the debate about planning in the UK is dominated by two myths: that land is a scarce resource and that developers want to concrete over it.

"The result is a system that strictly rations a commodity in bountiful supply. Those sympathetic to house building are caricatured as wanting to concrete over' the whole country.

"In fact using less than one per cent of rural land would be sufficient to increase land available for housing by more than ten per cent. This equates to less land than is currently designated as agricultural set-aside (fallow land).

"My own place of work has been forced to build a multi-storey car park at huge expense, while unfarmed scrubland, complete with electricity pylon and motorway view, is conserved' right next door.

"We believe there need not be a conflict between environment and prosperity, if we manage the process of development properly. Given space, we can develop greener towns and cities that are safer, cleaner and more comfortable, designed to be environmentally-friendly."

Bradford-based political analyst Richard North, who does research for the Conservative Party's Shadow Cabinet, acknowledges the points made by Simon Wolfson and Policy Exchange, but believes they do not go far enough.

He said: "Only three per cent of Britain's population lives in the country; 97 per cent live in urban environments. Sixty per cent of wildlife is found in domestic urban environments, birds are sustained by people feeding them in their back gardens.

"Yet we are sacrificing the urban environment for the notional benefit of preserving something in vast quantities which is not actually worth preserving.

"A lot of green belt is unsightly scrub-land, neither aesthetically pleasing nor environmentally productive. If you want bio-diversity go into the towns because you won't find it in the countryside," he said.

Richard North is saying that instead of protecting disposable green belt by the post-war planning policy of zoning - separating shopping, residential, industrial sites and green belt - light industry and residential development should be brought back together again.

"Having vast housing estates surrounded by greenery has only made them vandal prone. If we scrapped zoning and mixed light industrial and residential developments it would re-integrate our communities, provide more defensible spaces and reduce traffic congestion by taking work closer to where people live," he added.

Bradford Council Liberal-Democrat Councillor David Ward agrees that putting more resources into urban living makes sense. But he takes issue with the think tank report claim that opening up more green belt land would liberate the economy and ease traffic congestion.

He said: "We have something like 40,000 cars a day going from Bradford to Leeds and about 20,000 coming the other way.

"All of the new developments, the conversions, in Bradford are enabling people to relocate in the city. That's a benefit in terms of reducing congestion.

"If you release more green belt all you will get is a huge increase in congestion. It makes more sense to develop brown field sites, but it is easier and more profitable for builders to go onto green field sites.

"Many of the new estates on green field sites don't have a sense of community; they don't have local shops.

"Planning regulations favour builders rather than communities. Democratically-elected local authorities do not have the power to tell builders where to build houses.

"Bradford's Unitary Development Plan (UDP) says Bradford needs 2,000 new houses a year for the next ten years. The authority has to find the land for those 20,000 houses; but it cannot tell builders where they should be. If the builder doesn't agree he will appeal to the Secretary of State.

"The council came up with its own distribution of green belt allocation and that was overturned by a Government inspector who came up from Bristol.

"The Liberal-Democrat view is that there is less green belt around some of our urban areas than there should be because of that inspector's decision."

Councillor Ward takes issue with the Regional Spatial Strategy which calls for more than 73,000 more homes across three West Yorkshire districts by 2021, including 30,000 in the Bradford Metropolitan District.

He says the calculations by the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly are "dubious."

"Bradford knows what it needs - more multi-bedroom houses in certain areas. The trickle-down effect of building expensive houses which people move into, leaving their houses to be bought by people lower down the ladder, doesn't work. Houses are left empty, boarded up," he added.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England, as you might expect, is deeply suspicious of plausible proposals to weaken the brownbelt priority.

Bradford West MP Marsha Singh, Shipley MP Philip Davies, Keighley MP Ann Cryer and Batley and Spen MP Mike Wood are among more than 100 MPs who have signed a petition against these proposals.

They are apprehensive that the countryside will be overrun by house building and are calling for changes to the draft housing policy embodied by the Regional Spatial Strategy.

Over the past couple of years petitions have been signed by hundreds of people in the district, such as residents campaigning to protect land at Baildon; Ashwell Farm, Heaton; and whole swathes of land around Silsden from house builders.

They would take issue with the think tank report on the beneficial effect of releasing more greenbelt for development. For them and for many others too, such an idea represents the point of a much bigger spearhead.

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