Labour has fired the starting gun on a process that will see vast tracts of protected “green belt” land recategorised as “grey belt” so that it can be built on much more easily.
This is a huge moment for land planning that the Government hopes will go some way to tackling the country’s housing crisis.
In her first speech as Chancellor yesterday, Rachel Reeves confirmed plans to build 1.5 million new homes in England during this Parliament – a mammoth project that she said will involve “reviews of green belt boundaries” up and down the country.
Campaigners have traditionally been strongly opposed to any green belt development, arguing that nature is already having a very tough time with the UK losing a fifth of all its wildlife in just 50 years.
But that needs to be set against alarming housing statistics, such as a recent analysis of 33 leading OECD economies which found that only in Finland do people spend more on housing as a proportion of total spending than in the UK.
And this is something campaigners have come to accept.
As Wildlife Trusts chief executive Craig Bennett said: “Environmental groups totally understand the need to build new housing.”
But there are strong conditions attached to building on any site redesignated as grey belt, a new category of apparently second-rate green belt land loosely identified as “car parks, scrubland and former tips”.
Some scrubland can be highly beneficial for birds and insects, even if it’s not much to look at.
“Some people might look at scrubland and think it’s a bit messy but actually nature loves messy habitats. So let’s not rush our decisions and make sure they’re based on science,” Mr Bennett said.