Future-proofing

“Since about 1940, the population of Los Angeles has grown at about the same rate as the population of London. Los Angeles is now so enormous that if you somehow managed to pick it up and plonk it down on England, it would extend from Brighton on the south coast to Cambridge in the north-east. That’s what happens if you don’t have a green belt.”

Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate.

As London grows into a higher-density city, so more people need green spaces. Land and biodiversity protection policies increasingly recognise their value, and require that they should be enhanced in future.

We believe that when cities grow, land protection policies should be strengthened rather than weakened or abandoned.

But don’t we need new homes?

YES, and the LGBC supports building them – but we question where they are being built and how quickly developers are taking up existing planning permissions. 218,000 homes in and around London have planning permission, but haven’t been built. 111,000 homes in London are waiting to be built. Add to this the 66,800 in the South East and 40,300 in the East of England. The Mayor of London’s Further Alterations to the London Plan states that brownfield ‘opportunity areas’ in the capital alone could provide 300,000 new homes. None of these affect Green Belt.

In England, planning permissions for over a million new homes have yet to be built out.

So why aren’t they being built?

Releasing Green Belt land does not increase the rate at which new homes are built, it just gives developers more sites to choose from and encourages them to ignore brownfield sites. Housebuilders can make more profit when previously-protected countryside is opened up to lower-density housing.

Brownfield first

The LGBC argues for a ‘brownfield first’ approach. We can plan to build more densely to absorb London’s growth, and numerous high-quality, low-rise designs have already shown that this is possible.

Why do we say the housing figures are flawed?

At the root of the problem are exceptionally high housing targets, based on flawed numbers and a system which pushes councils to make sites available even when there is no likelihood the homes will soon be built.

Population projections are based on past growth and take no account of demographic, social and economic changes since Brexit and Covid. They frustrate policies to ‘level up’ the North and put further pressure on London and the South East. Housing algorithms are creating targets much higher than even the Government’s need assessments. They only open up countryside to housebuilders where they can make more profit.

More such arguments can be found in our Chair Richard Knox-Johnston’s recent presentation to Esher Residents’ Association. Download Powerpoint Presentation here.