Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to protect green belt and green open spaces in North Hertfordshire local authority area.

As pledged in the Collation Agreement, this Government has safeguarded national Green Belt protection and increased protection of important green spaces.

We have abolished the Labour Government’s top-down Regional Strategies which sought to delete the Green Belt in and around 30 towns and cities. This has included revoking the East of England Regional Spatial Strategy (May 2008) which advocated reviewing and potential removal of Green Belt boundaries in North Hertfordshire.

We have also:

• Introduced a new Local Green Space planning designation, which allows councils and neighbourhood plans to give added protection to valuable local green spaces;

• Published the National Planning Policy Framework which re-affirms Green Belt protection;

• Given councils stronger powers to tackle ‘garden grabbing’, and stopped gardens being classified as brownfield land;

• Issued new waste planning policy which increases protection of the Green Belt;

• Published planning guidance which re-affirms the importance of the Green Belt during Local Plan preparation; and

• Consulted on proposed changes to planning policy on traveller sites to further increase Green Belt safeguards.