Since its introduction in the post-war period, where it started life as a pragmatic constraint on urban sprawl, the green belt has mutated into an ideological battleground.
Those who consider it to be an unnecessary constraint on progress advocate for its complete removal; others consider it to be sacrosanct, inviolable from development and to be protected at all costs.
The Green Belt Challenge
The reality is—of course—more complex than this, yet it cannot be argued that a blanket ban on any form of development within the green belt, or any amendments to its boundaries, is either pragmatic or reasonable.
It is increasingly apparent that green belt policy needs to be revisited to ensure that it is delivering the best outcomes for citizens. There is not enough land to deliver the homes that we need.
Local planning authorities, who are responsible for managing green belt boundaries, are unlikely to be able to undertake such a task, needing a unified strategy spanning multiple authorities.
Given the strength of feeling and the geography of England’s green belt, this should take the form of a Royal Commission. Only an inquiry with this authority will be able to bring together the relevant parties to properly consider the full range of issues.
As it becomes increasingly difficult to find affordable housing within our cities, those who need to travel frequently to work are forced to live beyond the green belt – in particular, those on lower-paid jobs and the key workers on which cities rely. This adds significant time to the daily commute and acts as a huge drain on productivity and hampers growth.
Station Development
A core objective of green belt policy is to prevent the merging of adjacent settlements. This is sensible. On the other hand, the almost blanket ban on any significant development within designated green belt represents a misunderstanding of its original purpose.
Many cities are surrounded by smaller towns which sit within the green belt: St Albans, Coventry, Guildford, Potters Bar, Macclesfield: these are all towns which are located entirely within the green belts of England’s cities. Green belt inhibits the merging of adjacent settlements, but also prevents the introduction of new settlements within it, even if they possess clear boundaries and sufficient green space to ensure they remain distinct from one another.
England’s train routes tend to radiate from the centre of its cities. Along many of these are stations which benefit from short travel times to urban centres, but which are located entirely within the green belt or open land.
These rural stations provide an obvious opportunity for high-density development close to public transport and within easy reach of places of work.
Multiple studies have shown that these rural stations have the capacity to sustain well over a million new homes. Yet restrictive planning policies, not least green belt protections, prevent this from happening.
10 minutes’ walk equates to around 800m (half a mile). A circle around a single station with a diameter of a mile could, even at modest densities, support up to 15,000 homes. That’s around half of the total number of homes that will be delivered on the Olympic Park.
Unlike Victorian and pre-war England, where new train lines and stations were built so that the land around them could be developed for housing, we would not need to construct new railways for this purpose. They already exist. But the mechanisms for bringing forward such development are subject to considerable planning constraints which often delay projects for years.
Development Corporations
To speed up the delivery of homes in these locations we might adopt a Development Corporation model, with planning powers devolved to a specially incorporated body responsible for delivery. These development corporations would be responsible for bringing forward development in these locations within a defined period – perhaps 10 years – acting as a “master developer”, acquiring land and setting out a masterplan for each location, accompanied by a strict design code informed by the location and local character.
Design codes should set out building heights, street patterns, the quantum of accommodation, orientation and massing, but not favour any particular style: they should promote specificity and a sense of place, rooted in an understanding of context, but this does not mean that they should attempt to ape local vernacular styles.
To coordinate development along transport networks, development corporations could be established following railway lines. This would allow the introduction of social infrastructure, such as schools and healthcare facilities, which need a certain population to support. For example, Meldreth, Foxton and Shepreth stations, which lie on the London to Cambridge line, could together provide homes for over 50,000 people—yet none of these stations is more than 12 minutes apart.
The introduction of new active transport routes, such as cycleways, could also be enabled through the acquisition of land either side of the existing railway, linking these new settlements by sustainable means.
It is not just stations within rural areas that should benefit from development. Transport for London has struggled with securing planning consent for some of its suburban stations.
Therefore, there should be the introduction of new policies to make such development easier. This might take the form of a “presumption in favour” of development close to all stations – including those in urban areas, where densities are significantly higher than those in the surrounding areas.
To mitigate the loss of open space in rural areas, for every hectare taken out of green belt for the purposes of development, an equivalent area could be included within it elsewhere, resulting in no net loss of protected space.
Building within ten minutes’ walk of England’s accessible stations could yield at least 1.2m homes, with the loss of just 680 square kilometres of green belt (in fact it grew by 242 sq km between 2022 and 2023 alone).
There are more reasons to build around stations than not. The mild inconvenience faced by those living in outlying areas who will be unable to use station car parks will be more than mitigated by the huge gains achieved through the provision of new homes, social infrastructure, increased productivity, and economic growth.
This article was first published in the Fabian Society pamphlet “Homes for Britain” in March 2023.