Land News

10,000 acres of greenbelt under threat from development

Lawson Fairbank, 12th March 2007

At least 10,000 acres of greenbelt land are likely to be sacrificed to build some of the biggest developments in Britain in the past 30 years according to research by the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Guardian.

Further to this, land speculators banking on the forthcoming government white paper on planning to relax rural protection rules.

Shaun Spiers, CPRE's chief executive, said of the findings;

"Many villages will be engulfed by housing, several towns could nearly double in size and others would effectively join up with each other to create new conurbations"

The government is under pressure from housebuilders, universities, airports, and retail parks - all seeking to take advantage increased housing targets and changes to the planning system.

The research identified major erosion of the greenbelt in many areas:

Bath, York, Oxford and Cambridge universities want to release large amounts of greenbelt land which they own.
Six Oxfordshire landowners, including Thames Water, Magdalen and Brasenose colleges, are lobbying planners to release thousands of acres of their greenbelt. Thames and Magdalen stand to make more than £300m if their plans for up to 8,500 houses are approved.
Several regional airports will need to destroy large areas of greenbelt land to expand as planned. Gatwick wants 240 hectares for a second runway, and Luton, Manchester, Bristol and Liverpool airports will also need to grow on greenbelt land.
Annual reports show that major housebuilders have more than 200,000 acres of greenfield sites "under option" to develop.
Some of the biggest developments are planned for Hertfordshire. "We are being asked to take a minimum of 92,000 new homes, of which nearly 30,000 will have to on greenbelt land", said Derrick Ashley, the executive council member for planning at Hertfordshire county council. "If these plans go ahead there will be almost continual ribbon development for miles. Nowhere is safe."