New Developments on Green-belt Land

Gavin Williamson Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) on securing the debate and leading it so well.

Some 91.4% of my South Staffordshire constituency sits within green-belt land, and the largest number of signatories to the petition—616 in all—are South Staffordshire residents. That indicates the real passion, concern and desire to protect the green belt in South Staffordshire.

There are a number of things that the Government can do to make a material difference to protect the environment, nature and conservation—all things that every one of us in this House values and wants to protect so very much. At the moment there is a real lack of clarity in the Government’s approach to the duty to co-operate. That puts enormous pressure on many local authorities, especially ones that neighbour large urban, metropolitan areas.

The Government have said that there will be changes to the duty to co-operate, but they have not come up with the clarification that authorities need to be in the best position to proceed with local plans and understand what the new rules will be. I hope that the new Minister will take the opportunity to set out clearly what the new rules on the duty to co-operate, or its abolition, will mean. If he is not able to do so, will he give a date for when that clarification will come about?

It would also be useful if the Minister could speak to local authorities that are in the process of developing their local plans. In South Staffordshire, we are in a terrible situation. We are having thousands of houses imposed on the green belt by Black Country authorities and by Birmingham as a result of the Government’s saying that they are going to abolish the duty to co-operate but not clarifying what they will replace it with. This is urgent. Will the Minister say whether authorities that are proceeding with local plans are able to pause those plans and make sure that they have protections so that they are not vulnerable to unscrupulous developers coming forward with plans? Authorities cannot properly proceed until the Government clarify what the replacement for the duty to co-operate will look like. I hope the Minister will be able to do that today.

The simple reality is that the duty to co-operate system is causing many local authorities to build the wrong types of houses in the wrong areas. It is a blight on our countryside and our green belt. The Minister needs to act on the Government policy to abolish the duty to co-operate and stop imposing thousands of housing units on the green belt when it would be more appropriate to use brownfield sites and inner cities in order to regenerate.

The hon. Member for Coventry North West made a very important point about how the housing numbers that local authorities are required to use are simply wrong. It is widely known in the industry, by planning authorities and in communities that they are wrong. The 2014 figures, which are currently the basis for plans, are leading to the incorrect numbers being used by local authorities, which puts an even greater burden on councils to provide numbers that are not required. That needs to be urgently addressed. The figures are eight years out of date.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that coupled with that is the uncertainty regarding the five-year land supply? Does that not also need urgent clarification?

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend is spot on. I know that our hon. Friend the Housing Minister has great ambition and drive. He has many predecessors whom he can far outshine by showing great leadership. He can be known as the finest Housing Minister out of many by giving clarity on these issues. Making reforms to the housing market and to housing supply would not only benefit people who want to buy a home, but protect the green belt, our countryside and nature. I urge him to seize the day and do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Gary. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) not only on securing a debate that is clearly of great importance to the communities that she represents, but on her willingness to tackle at length a subject that is controversial and has arguably failed to receive the attention it deserves in this place. I also thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part this morning in what has been a lively, interesting and thoughtful session.

In opening the debate, my hon. Friend outlined with her customary forcefulness her concern about the large-scale green belt release that has been authorised on the fringes of her Coventry constituency. The individual cases she mentioned are complex and I do not intend to comment on them in detail, other than to say that, more than anything, they illustrate the difficult position in which individual local authorities are placed in the absence of effective sub-regional frameworks for managing housing growth.

My hon. Friend was also at pains to situate the general issues arising from green-belt development in her city within the context of Britain’s housing crisis, and she was right to do so. After all, the point at issue here is not whether green belts have value and can provide for public recreation, contact with nature and habitat maintenance, which they do. Rather, it is whether green-belt land should be released to meet the significant housing need that now exists across England and, if so, how much and under what circumstances.

When it comes to the green belt, what should be in many ways a relatively dispassionate debate consistently provokes intense emotion and polarisation. That is partly because housing development, by its very nature, will always be a contentious issue, but that fact alone cannot account for the strength of feeling generated by this issue.

I would suggest that at least two other factors underlie the passions provoked by the green belt. The first is that any consideration of the green belt as policy labours under a series of misconceptions. Chief among them is the falsehood, which was mentioned by the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), that green belt is always and everywhere green fields, as opposed to the reality, which is that, at least on the edges of most major cities, green belts include abandoned industrial buildings, petrol stations, scrubland, motorways, farmland, golf courses and nature-rich green fields. 

The second misconception is that, more often than not, any debate about the future of the green belt is framed as an irreconcilable choice between two flawed options— namely, the complete abolition of green belts or rendering their present boundaries entirely sacrosanct. A more honest and nuanced approach is long overdue—one that recognises that the green belt has served England’s towns and cities very well over many decades, in terms of its original aim of preventing unlimited urban sprawl, and that it must be retained for that purpose. We also need to accept that the green belt’s existence has come at a cost, in terms of constrained housing supply, growing problems with affordability and problematic development displacement, and that there is a strong case for looking again at how the policy should operate in the years ahead.

The Labour party fully supports the prioritisation of brownfield development. We remain committed to preserving the green belt and would resist any attempts to abolish it, as per the long-held wishes of those for whom nothing short of total planning deregulation will suffice. Not only are green belts not to blame for all the country’s housing shortage ills, but their removal would without question trigger a tsunami of land speculation and an increase in low-quality, high-cost and infra- structure-deficient development of the kind that, as we have heard, is already far too commonplace.

However, we are equally opposed to any attempt, along the lines mooted by the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) in the recent Conservative leadership contest, to prevent green-belt land from being released for development under any circumstances. The truth is that there are certain types of land within green-belt boundaries—for example, brownfield land within green belt or poor monocultural farmland next to key transport hubs—that are ideally suited for development. Politicians who argue that every inch of green-belt land should be forever off limits are doing the public a disservice.

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

I wish to respectfully correct the hon. Gentleman. He is referring to already developed land—he talked about petrol stations and industrial areas—but actually that sits outside the green-belt designation. Green-belt designation does not include previously developed industrial land.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman; I think he is wrong on that point. It includes brownfield land and land that has previously been developed. That is part of the problem: there is a misconception that green belt always equals greenfield, but it does not. I will talk about the distinction in a minute, because it is important for how we might go forward.

The debate we should be having is not a rehash of the stale exchanges between those who wish to abolish the green belt entirely and those who wish to render it inviolable. It should instead focus on what the Government need to do to ensure that more of the right bits of the green belt are released for development, that land-value capture is maximised on those sites so that the communities in question can benefit from first-class infrastructure and more affordable housing, and that green-belt land with the highest environmental and amenity value is properly protected, enhanced and made more accessible. The selective release of green belt should increase, rather than decrease, the opportunities for urban communities to benefit from green space and nature.

In our view, any approach to green-belt development must be premised on the involvement of local communities. More needs to be done to ensure that local authorities routinely review green-belt land as part of the local plan-making process, and that they have the freedom to take a balanced view of how green-belt land within their boundaries is managed. We also want to see a more meaningful role for the public in determining which areas of green-belt land are permanently protected, which are improved and made more accessible, and which, if any, might be appropriate for new homes.

Perhaps most importantly, any green-belt development must deliver tangible benefits for local communities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West ably outlined, the problem is that in far too many cases today, green-belt land is being transformed into ill-planned neighbourhoods full of overpriced executive homes with the inevitable community backlash that that results in. That point was also made by my hon. Friends the Members for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) and for Reading East (Matt Rodda), and by the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield).

Ensuring that green-belt development leads to beautiful and well-serviced neighbourhoods with good access to improved green open spaces and homes that are genuinely affordable for local people would require reform, not least to enable local authorities to acquire the land at a reasonable price, but that is entirely feasible if the political will exists. We can debate the precise delivery mechanisms, but Labour believes that the case for more effectively facilitated, very limited development on poor-quality land within green belts in areas where it is most needed, in a way that meets local housing need, while at the same time protecting and enhancing high-quality green-belt land for the benefit of the public, is unarguable.

The alternative—here I take issue with the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson)—is to accept what is already taking place: namely, the progressive loss of all kinds of green-belt land, including greenfield and high-quality green-belt land, via haphazard and speculative fringe development, often of poor quality and via appeal. Doing so also sets aside a potentially valuable means of boosting housing supply, simply because it is too politically sensitive.

In the face of a housing crisis that is our country’s most pernicious iniquity, blighting the lives of millions, the notion that every part of the green belt is sacrosanct cannot be justified. It is high time for a serious debate about the role that a reimagined green belt can play in tackling the crisis. I look forward to hearing from the new Minister, and I once again welcome him to his place. I hope he can clarify not just what the Government intend to do to prevent the ongoing release of high-quality, nature-rich green-belt land of the kind we have heard about, but what the Government’s thinking on the green belt now is more generally, given that in the space of just three years the present Prime Minister has called both for a million homes to be built on green-belt land and for no green-belt development whatsoever to take place.