Labour plans to plow over green belt

So just to clarify Labour are not planning to plow (plough?) over the Green Belt then?

I agree. 'Green belt' is a very misleading expression.

I’ve no idea what will happen but it’s got to be better than the total shambles currently - loads of government consultations which then never get reported on, zero clarity about when and if changes that have been announced will happen and seriously underfunded local authorities. That said, the increase in planning fees that’s coming will help the day to day work of local planning authorities.
I do still think that there needs to be change in policy and a sense of the government genuinely planning beyond the next general election - some effort on thinking about the next 100 years rather than just lurching from vote to vote.

They're not great, but developers cannot rewrite the laws of physics any more than any of us can.

The solutions are:

Accept small houses

Build larger houses on the same amount of land (which means fewer houses in number, and more people stuck in flatshares or parents' houses, probably worse for mental health)

Build on larger areas: This means either green belt, golf belt, "car belt" (shift towards PT and build on currently devoted to cars) or "sky belt" (add extra floor area per person by building UPWARDS, meaning either tall skinny houses OR moving towards apartments with balconies and shared gardens/access to parks instead of individual gardens)

Trade offs!

I suspect golf course building might be the most popular option, once the Tories are out....

I’d have no issues with some golf courses being built on.
But your perception of what is farmland and what’s being proposed to be built on is a bit skewed. I don’t think anyone is proposing building over genuinely working land, or genuinely beautiful land for that matter. My FIL owns about 90 acres of Surrey land. 3 acres are brown field, warehouses on it which make money only for him. He tried for 5 years to get permission to build houses on it. No dice. The rest is just fields, doing nothing except being home to a few horses and private walking space for our family. Nothing is grown (except some trees, which are lovely and valuable for sure, but aren’t food) no animals graze. It’s just a massive garden. But it’s designated green field farmland so can’t be built on. You could build a lot of houses on just a tiny square or it, which would be much more useful, and would still leave lots of green.

A reassessment of land, what it’s actually used for and needed for, could open up new spaces to built on and reduce the congestion of houses in other areas, it doesn’t all have to be in cities.

If the new houses are of the same size/quality as the ones being speedily built around here then I see a huge rise in mental health problems and depression incoming.

No space between the houses, tiny windows I doubt let any light in and an adult couldn’t even climb out of if there was a fire.

Depressing as fuck.

It may be unpopular to say, but immigration is the largest driver for Uk population growth, (according to the National Office of statistics) and there's little sign of that changing anytime soon...

I want less people, not more houses.

Our town (now more the size of a city) has these horrible tiny blocks of houses going up at an alarming rate on every field/scrap of land surrounding it.

But no new doctors, or surgeries. No new schools. Deteriorating town centre. Same crappy tiny roads now rammed every day. It is claustrophobic and miserable and I’m doing all in my power to get us out of here.

But there will still be lots of people trapped here, crammed in together like cattle with rising tensions as people can’t get their children in to see a gp or get their children safely into school with the double parked traffic.

With population growth in the UK, currently around 1-1.5% it's probably inevitable.

If anything it's likely to increase

People need homes. I hate the Tories too.

Just to add to the above: densifying existing places (and thereby avoiding building on meadows) also requires a bit of flexibility about changing, altering and sometimes pulling down and replacing buildings. You can get a very long way by adding extra floors to a regular detached house and dividing it into two semis, or replacing a bungalow (they tend to have big plots) with a 4-5 storey mini block of apartments or maisonettes, and so on.

Having architectural links with history can be nice and all, but I do think the British go a bit far with the determination to cling on to every unexciting 1930s semi or bungalow. Some of these structures need to be replaced. Perhaps offering more traditional styled architecture along the Poundbury style of esthetics would help? Some people are snobbish about this, but I think it helps to offer stuff that is pretty and is what people are used to.

I'd like to see apartments/maisonnettes with two good elevators and nice shared gardens to become the norm for more elderly couples rather than bungalows; bungalows are ridiculously space-inefficient and encourage sprawl, yet without more access to single-storey stairless living, it's going to continue to be very hard to get older people to downsize from bigger family-sized homes.

Anyway, just some thoughts if we want to try and deal with the current crisis without paving over every meadow.

I think it's important to remember that a lot of green belt isn't actually... green. A lot of it has development on it already.

That said, I'd strongly prefer building on brownfields, and on the "golf belt" (golf courses may look green but they really, really aren't. And they currently take up almost as much space as housing in the UK!). And I'd also like to see more densification of existing suburbs (putting low-rise flats in place of bungalows, adding extra stories to existing buildings, perhaps putting some extra buildings in places of garages). I would also like to avoid unnecessary urban sprawl. I see these horrid new-build housing estates on the edge of town and they seem so badly located and so lacking in services and in nice, sociable shared spaces.

It's important that people understand that there are trade-offs about building on brownfield and already-developed sites.

When we densify existing suburbs, we get moans about "dust/noise of construction" and "pressure on GPs/schools/whatever" (even though most schools have falling rolls these days). Infrastructure does catch up eventually (because new residents are not just consumers of services... they also work in, staff and pay taxes towards GP services and the like), but in the meantime there can be time lags and people have simply got to be patient about this. People also panic about "where will all the cars go?" and it may be essential to tighten up parking laws and for the area to shift more towards public transport and other modes of transport, to ensure that extra residents don't cause the whole area to become horribly congested.

And building on brownfield sites brings conflicts of its own. A lot of residents of suburbia and the countryside are all in favor of "Build on brownfield!" because they basically think this is a way of "putting those annoying people in a bin where I don't have to see them, while I get to hog all this lovely space and greenery for myself." They often suddenly become a lot less keen when the penny starts to drop and they begin to realize that "brownfield" tends to mean "car parks" most of the time, and that their ability to drive into town and park is going to start disappearing (this is starting to happen in places like Leeds, apparently). Also, if the UK shifts towards a more Continental/Japanese model where urban centers are full of apartments and people living there, those residents will want more walkable and bikeable centers and will start to push back against the suburban denizens who are used to being able to drive their SUVs in.

If we want to be stricter about avoiding green belt, it would also help if the British could try and get a bit more used to the idea of apartments (not for everyone, but perhaps for more people? More families?), and sharing a shared garden or local park, rather than insisting on detached homes with gardens for everyone. I live this way, and it can be a great way to raise a family if you have decent lifts, soundproofing and balconies. That demands a bit of a culture shift and also learning from other cultures that make apartment living "work."

The only other alterative is "tall skinny houses with many floors." I know some people here in Tokyo who have these; they are nice in some ways and it can be nice to have your own plot of land, but oh my goodness, people do get awfully sick of the millions of stairs! And you can't have a proper balcony.

Trade-offs, innit?

I’m a town planner and live in an area that is 50% green belt. It’s not all fields, parks and bridleways.
I personally think we should have some qualitative measure of “greenness” which would free up at least 5 large sites I can think of that are, as previous poster said, car parks and hardstandings.
the policy at the moment is, yes, development of previously developed land is an exception to inappropriate development but there is the caveat that the new development shall not have a greater impact on openness than the existing situation.
With ground level PDL it is almost inevitable that any development will have a greater impact on openness. So no development. When actually a sensible approach would be to consider pragmatically what that space offers in relation to the purposes of green belt designation.
Part of the problem also is that de designation through local plan process hardly ever happens. And plans run in a cycle of years. So actually having clearer and sensible central government guidance (and more money in local authority planning, so extra cash would be helpful from the government too) might make the system more realistic and dynamic.

Of course there should also be the capacity to require that landowners don’t deliberately degrade sites.

So why not plough up the golf courses, which as pps said take up far too much room in an overpopulated country, for very few people, and for generally well-off people to boot? Plus are bad for the environment? Rather than eating up more farmland which provides amenity and something fairly essential for the lives of those overpopulated millions.

We tend to build 2 storeys high in the UK, or 32. We could, in the right places, build 4 storeys high. That would take up a little less land. I know the 32s have been blown up now, because they were too high, but it was a phase we went through some years ago.

I wish there would be more regulation about how many houses can be plonked tightly on to any given space. A local developer has been allowed to put expensive houses on to a small field, having taken down a row of thin trees, and he has given them tiny lawns and massive areas for 6 or so vehicles to park, all arid stones. There's hardly room for a green blade. He's also given them those sodding outside lights that are like little cylinders, for neurotic prats to think how nice it is to light everything up and not be frightened of the dark, and completely destroy the British countryside thereby. One day I am going to run amok and smash them all and get sent to prison for it.

But the Tories are also destroying green belt land, it's not a labour policy but we all recognise that we need more houses.

The big issue that needs to be tackled is buy to let and second homes. Many places with acute housing shortages are areas where second homes have been an issue or where rentals have grown. So it's pointless building more if they end up in the wrong hands. 170 homes were built near me and before they were even finished every house was in the hands of a large buy to let landlord.... charging 900 quid a month for a one bedroom apartment and over a 1000 for a small house.

This is all boils down to years of poor policy and dogged free market philosophy. Something needs to change drastically because I don't think you can build your way out of a housing crisis. Unfortunately it needs regulations and that's something this government doesn't do.

Woah, where did you get the impression nature meant so little to me? I said I would be voting Labour with some reservations. Should I be voting Tory?

@JaneyGee All the things that have happened in housing development and immigration during the last 13 years has happened under a Tory government, yet all your anger is directed at the left.

Green belt designation is strategic, it's about stopping separate towns merging into one. Personally I think it is an out of date idea and it would be fine for some towns to merge more. The remaining areas should then be enhanced to provide wildlife-rich green recreational space on the urban fringe for the larger population.

I’ll have this one

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/140634698#/?channel=RES_BUY

I’d love to live on the Isle of Wight

'The words of the speech don't actually say much of anything. I'm not comforted by them.'

But you didn't reference them either did you?
Just went with the most dramatic interpretation & dropped it into a thread title!

Excuse me for being cynical of your motives!

There are so many of these sort of threads around at the moment - anyone would think the Tories are worried about losing the next election! 🙄

Sorry to burst your classist bubble but all the golf fanatics I know are retired builders.
Golf courses are rubbish for the environment as they use toxic weed killers.
Destroy nature at your peril.
Plenty of unused office blocks that could be turned into homes.

But there are so many brownfield sites and unused office blocks.
Once the left chop down every tree, build over every green field and poison every last wildflower, who will pollinate your crops?
Without insects we cannot survive.
Does wildlife and nature mean so little to you.