The 'grey belt' works well as a slogan: it’s simple and concise, visual and intriguing. As intended, it immediately evokes images of unattractive scraps of land which would benefit from redevelopment. As such, it both questions the validity of the Green Belt and suggests a solution to the housing crisis – again, just as the government intended.
Defining the Grey Belt
The government asserted that the Grey Belt would be, ‘A new class of land to ensure grey and poor-quality parts of the Green Belt are prioritised, and that any development benefits local communities’ also that, ‘Poor-quality and ugly areas of the Green Belt should be clearly prioritised over nature-rich, environmentally valuable land’.
However, even despite some clarification following the publication of the revised NPPF in December, the definition of the Grey Belt lacks clarity, an evidence base or wide-ranging support.
The revised NPPF defines Grey Belt land and land in the Green Belt comprising previously developed land and/or any other land that, in either case, does not strongly contribute to three of the purposes of including land within the Green Belt, namely a) to check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas, b) to prevent neighbouring towns merging into one another or c) to preserve the setting and special character of historic towns. In addition, the Grey Belt designation does not apply to land covered by footnote 7 e.g. an SSSI, National Park or a National Landscape (formerly AONB). The final definition is more flexible than that consulted on in the draft NPPF and so has the potential to be relevant to a relatively large number of sites.
So the definition of the Grey Belt deviates from the very purpose of the Green Belt which was all about the ‘preservation of openness’ and not how ‘ugly’ or what ‘quality’ the land is. Indeed those familiar with Planning Policy Guidance Note 2 will recall its requirement that, ‘Boundaries should not be amended or development allowed merely because the land has become derelict’. It has even been suggested that the Grey Belt makes light of the Green Belt as a serious cultural definition (to paraphrase the TCPA) or more specifically, ‘a political idea being retrofitted into public policy’.
The idea is that the new definition of the Grey Belt should allow sustainable sites to be brought forward ahead of local plan reviews, freeing up land for housing sooner than would otherwise be possible.
However, the identification of land as having limited ability to meet the definition of the Green Belt has been recognised previously: Green Belt that makes a limited contribution has been referred as ‘poorly performing Green Belt’ or ‘low quality Green Belt’. Is this little more than a new label? More to the point, will Grey Belt land become a permanent designation or a temporary one, for as soon as Grey Belt land becomes built upon, it then presumably it is no longer Grey Belt?
Existing policy position
The process by which a local planning authority (LPA) can remove land from the Green Belt already existed before December’s NPPF was published, and brownfield land (including that which occurs within the Green Belt) is not ‘untouchable’ as might be believed. Currently if available brownfield sites within an urban area have been used up, densities have been optimised and the Duty to Cooperate fails to produce adequate alternatives, changes to the Green Belt boundary can take place and brownfield sites within the Green Belt are likely to be at the top of the list of suitable sites – notwithstanding the other challenges that developing brownfield land raises.
Currently sites within the Green Belt can only be de-designated where there are ‘exceptional circumstances’, which are ‘fully evidenced and justified [...] through the plan-making process’.
The ‘golden rules’
For development to be considered appropriate it would need to comply with the Government’s ‘Golden Rules’.
golden rules are as follows:
a. affordable housing which reflects either: development plan policies produced in accordance with the NPPF (ie, 15 percentage points above the highest existing affordable housing requirement which would otherwise apply to the development, subject to a cap of 50%)
b. necessary improvements to local or national infrastructure
c. the provision of new, or improvements to existing, green spaces that are accessible to the public. New residents should be able to access good quality green spaces within a short walk of their home, whether through onsite provision or through access to offsite spaces.
The most significant on these, from a development viability perspective, is that all new residential development would be expected to deliver an additional 15% affordable over and above that currently sought by existing affordable housing policy (capped at 50%).
earlier draft of the NPPF had stated that a blanket 50% affordable housing requirement would be made of any new housing development in the Green Belt. When the revised version was published in December there was some relief that this requirement had been modified. These modifications appear to address concerns raised during the consultation period among the development industry, principally around the working of the Government’s previous benchmark land value (BLV) and the potential it had to disincentivise the release of land for development.
In addition, there is a clear objective that proposed affordable housing includes provision of socially rented properties with multiple references to this form of housing within the NPPF. Housing for social rent typically generates less value than other forms of affordable housing and so coupled with the requirement to deliver a greater proportion of affordable housing could have viability implications in parts of the country where values are more marginal.
The Government has stated an intention to review Viability Guidance to consider whether there are circumstances in which site-specific viability assessment may be taken into account. Until this takes place the Guidance states that site specific viability assessments should not be undertaken for the purpose of reducing affordable housing provision. It is clear therefore that at least in the interim these targets are expected to be met in full.
The Built Environment Committee inquiry
In September, the Built Environment Committee launched an inquiry to, ‘Gain a better understanding of what Grey Belt land is, how it can contribute to housing targets and what sustainable Grey Belt development looks like’ – suggesting a possible lack of research prior to the policy being formulated. The committee, which is yet to publish a report, is considering the Government’s proposed golden rules of the sequential test for land release, as well as the requirements for the delivery of affordable housing provision, infrastructure and enhanced green spaces and how they may affect the success of developments in the Grey Belt.
The need for change
There is no question that something needs to change to enable adequate levels of future development. The new government has set itself the tough challenge of delivering 1.5 million homes this Parliament and its capacity to do so is not helped by the fact that the amount of land in England designated as Green Belt has actually increased by around 1.7% for the past two years (2021-22 and 2022-23). This is the result of large new Green Belt allocations having been more than offset by areas now allocated for housing. The Green Belt now covers 1,638,420 hectares (12.6% of England’s land mass). To put this in context, London’s Green Belt is now more than three times the size of Greater London itself and twice that of Luxembourg.
The need for a review of the Green Belt
My view is that a fundamental review of the Green Belt, declassifying and reclassifying land as necessary, is a key part of the solution to deliver the government’s housing targets in a sustainable manner.
We must move away from a ‘Green Belt review’ being akin to ‘concreting all over the Green Belt’. The idea that housing developments are all tarmac and no trees may have been true of post-war development when the Green Belt was introduced, but is not today. As a result of changes in approaches to development today, new communities have the potential to be attractive, primarily ‘green’ spaces which significantly boost both the aesthetic and biodiverse qualities of the land.
A sensible conversation about the Green Belt is overdue. Michael Gove (remember him?) referred to it, wrongly, as a landscape designation. More recently the excitement around old petrol stations and quarries having potential to overcome the housing crisis shows thewidespread ignorance about what the Green Belt is and what its purpose is. Many consider that the Green Belt is a bucolic ring of verdant countryside open to all, whereas in reality much of it is inaccessible and/or preserves and protects unattractive edge-of-settlement brownfield sites – those which have significant potential for sustainable development.
We have seen so many changes since the Green Belt was first introduced, including the New Towns programmes of the 1960s and 1970s – for example, places like Milton Keynes, Basingstoke and Crawley were villages when the Green Belt was first introduced.
It is imperative that the Green Belt is reviewed in order to deliver enough homes in the right places and protect land that deserves to be protected. But because development is so sensitive, so complex and has so much scope for subjectivity, a review of the Green Belt can only be delivered though a national or at least a strategic regional plan, led by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. The Green Belt began as a national policy and must remain as such.
Alternatives to the Grey Belt
It is important to note that a review of the Green Belt does not necessary mean a reduction in the Green Belt, which is how it is often presented. It means that that areas worthy of Green Belt status are included and those which don’t fulfil the purposes of the Green Belt are excluded. Smaller individual sites such as the car parks, petrol stations and quarries could berepurposed, and quite possibly in such a way that increases their aesthetic value. Including such sites in the debate around Grey Belt confuses the subject with brownfield or ‘Previously Developed Land’. There is already (and has been for a long time) a presumption in favour of development of such site – also known as a ‘brownfield first policy’ – that is not new.
To gain political and public support, any changes to the Green Belt, whether describing that reallocated land as Grey Belt or not, needs to be reframed on the basis of expansion. Since 1955 when the Green Belt was introduced, the UK population has grown from 51,063,902 to 68,497,907. The housing crisis demonstrates a desperate need for sustainable new settlements and we have a raft of landscape and ecological designations (National Landscapes, Special Protection Areas, National Parks SSSIs etc) and buffers to ensure that this is done sensitively. We need to move away from the idea that there’s something intrinsically unattractive about development: a well-designed development, in sympathetic landscaped surroundings can benefit the natural environment, rather than detract from it.
I believe that Keir Starmer is very much on the right track in accepting that the Green Belt must be reviewed to address the housing crisis, and this will invariably require some land within the Green Belt – land which doesn’t meet the Green Belt’s original purposes - to be released and made available for development.
It is possible to expand the Green Belt overall, while also delivering more homes - but a strategic approach is the only way in which this can be achieved and furthermore, Green Belt review should be seen a part of a wider strategy to bolster housing supply and not the only means of doing so.
