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Greenbelt UK land - a brief history and critique

Potential development land in the Greenbelt has been fiercely protected, but not all agree that the UK land use planning system is fit for purpose, writes Alex Way.

A dystopian vision of endless towns and cities lacking demarcation - in effect the UK as one never-ending urban sprawl - set out by the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) was the backdrop for the introduction of Greenbelts on UK land in the 1930s. Published around the same time, George Orwell’s ’The Road to Wigan Pier’ confirmed the fears of many that the English landscape, particularly in the north of the country, was in acute danger of being ravaged by inexorable industrial expansion. Although significant numbers of new homes were being built at the time - this era and the period immediately following the end of the Second World War was in fact the high-point for residential property development on UK land - the dominant fear was one of relentless industrial, rather than residential land development.

In total, some 13% of English land is currently classified as Greenbelt, the explicit aims of which being (i) protecting the natural environment, (ii) improving the quality of air in urban areas, (iii) preserving easy access to the countryside for ’town folk’, and (iv) upholding the character of rural communities. Unsurprisingly, the largest Greenbelt on a given region of UK land is the London Metropolitan Greenbelt (5,133 km²) although the North West, South and West Yorkshire, and West Midlands Greenbelts are also fairly sizeable (each is very roughly half that of the London Metropolitan Greenbelt).
It will be news to few that the UK land planning system has come under fire in recent years for failing to cater for the increased demand for new homes, with criticism in particular directed at its treatment of potential development land in Greenbelts. Land developers for instance argue that there is much ’sustainable’ residential development land in Greenbelts which could be used to make good the shortfall of homes in the UK (given there is insufficient Brownfield UK land), without compromising the stated aims of the Greenbelt as described above. In other words, in the view of property development firms, there are many potential development land sites entirely suited to hosting new homes, whose Greenbelt status to all intents and purposes serves no material function.

It is of course unsurprising that land developers are calling for greater freedom to develop Greenbelt English land, although they are far from being a lone dissenting voice drowned out in a sea of enthusiasm for Greenbelts. For those with a taste for Marxist theory, the following analysis of the raison d’etre of Greenbelts on large swathes of well-located UK land may appeal. Greenbelts are in fact a ’middle-class/bourgeois’, or perhaps more specifically, a ’rentier-class’ conspiracy. They exist to serve the interests of the middle-class by maintaining the prevailing social make-up of a given stretch of UK land; and the interests of landlords whose portfolio of residential property market assets benefits from severe land use planning restrictions with respect to residential property development on densely populated patches of UK land. This school of thought also doubts whether retaining Greenbelt restrictions on UK land around major cities actually improves air quality (it seems not to have done so in London for instance, which has the worst air quality in Europe); or that town and city dwellers exploit the benefits of easily-accesible ’countryside’ (at least in comparison to the benefits that would accrue to them from their having larger living spaces).

If conspiracy theories or ’economic determinism’ are too far-fetched or unpalatable, there is a more prosaic criticism of the restriction of property development on prime English land sites around towns and cities. It is that Greenbelts have actually failed in many cases to deliver what they set-out to achieve. There have been cases where to meet the demand for homes (whilst not breaching Greenbelt restrictions on UK land), land developers have effectively ’hopped-over’ the Greenbelt through buying land on the fringes of the restricted area to build conurbations - in effect, ’satellite towns’ - within commuting distance of the primary town or city . This is of course in direct conflict with underlying aim of containing ’urban sprawl’ on UK land - in such cases urban sprawl is in fact exacerbated. There is also the argument that it is unreasonable to force ever higher numbers of people into already densely populated urban spaces, when there are tracts of UK land around many towns and cities which are ripe for residential property development but remain unused due to outdated UK land use planning restrictions.