GEOFFREY LEAN: Labour building on Green Belt could worsen house crisis

This week could well see the start of the greatest onslaught on Britain's countryside in living memory. By the end of the month the assault, by the almost inevitable incoming Labour government, could be in full swing.

Yet, besides being his first major initiative, Sir Keir Starmer's plans to build on the green belt are likely to prove his first big blunder. For they are already deeply unpopular even among Labour voters and seem set to make Britain's scandalous housing crisis – blighting the lives of millions of young people – even worse.

As reported in yesterday's Mail, the putative new Prime Minister says he will 'hit the ground running' implementing his proposals 'on day one'. Two weeks on, Angela Rayner – as housing secretary – is set to announce her new building programme then order councils to start 'regularly reviewing' green belt plans.

Starmer and Rayner deny that they want to 'flatten the whole green belt', as one Labour official suggested recently. But the London Green Belt Council warns the Party's determination to get parts of it reclassified for development, risks 'unfettered' building that 'would do immeasurable harm'. And Labour has made it clear that it will undemocratically override councils trying to resist.

Yet, besides being his first major initiative, Sir Keir Starmer 's plans to build on the green belt are likely to prove his first big blunder

Starmer and Rayner deny that they want to 'flatten the whole green belt', as one Labour official suggested recently

The point is that Britain's 6,300 square miles of Green Belt land – introduced in the 1950s to prevent urban sprawl – have been an extraordinary success story.

London has grown at the same rate as Los Angeles in the past 80 years: without those vital belts of protected land, it would presumably now be the same vast size – concreting over everything from Brighton to Cambridge.

Instead the belts around towns and cities provide highly-appreciated 'countryside next door' for some 30 million Britons. At this point, I should say I live in London's green belt so I have a vested interest. But I did not oppose the building of a new estate on brownfield land next door to my home, though I did successfully push for some of the houses to be made affordable.

Labour seems wedded to the mantra widespread in Whitehall that Britain has a huge housing crisis, that building more will automatically bring prices down – and that therefore we must develop the green belt.

Polls show the real world disagrees. Only about a quarter of Britons support building in parts of the green belt. Sixty per cent, including, most likely, Labour voters, oppose it.

The mantra is wrong in every particular except the first. We do undoubtedly have a crisis. Home ownership among 25-34 year-olds has been cut by more than half over the past 20 years. Five million adults still live with their parents. It is absolutely unacceptable.

But building more houses does not, of itself, bring prices down. Government figures, supported by academic studies, show that even Labour's planned 300,000 new homes a year for 20 years would only trim house prices by some 6 per cent in real terms, in contrast to a 250 per cent rise since 1994.

This is partly because demand, including from immigration, is rising. But it's also partly due to people buying homes as investments, and housebuilders doing everything they can to keep prices up.

Developing the green belt is part of that. Houses can be sold for much more there, so builders commonly construct costly four to five bedroom properties; few are affordable.

The point is that Britain's 6,300 square miles of Green Belt land – introduced in the 1950s to prevent urban sprawl – have been an extraordinary success story

What's more, lower concentrations of houses are built in the green belt, typically under six an acre, which is less than half the national average density for new developments.

So ruining the green belt is unlikely to do anything to solve the housing crisis and could even make it worse, not least by pushing up prices even more.

We absolutely must build new homes, and build a lot of them, but they must specifically cater for the needs of the young, rather than the greed of the housebuilders.

We must use new cheap construction techniques to bring prices down. And we must use previously developed abandoned or under-utilised brownfield land, where the vital infrastructure already exists: Britain has enough of it, astonishingly, for 1.2 million homes.

Ominously, Labour leaders are saying that theirs needs to be the party of housebuilders. How about being the party of the people instead?

Geoffrey Lean is a specialist environment correspondent and author

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