Labour plans to plow over green belt

[brujarosada]

I despise the Tories.

I can't possibly vote for a party that would affirmatively plan to destroy designated green space.

What to do?

People need homes. I hate the Tories too.

@Kokeshi123 thank you! This is a very thoughtful post.

Lots of food for thought here, actually.

@Hiyawotcha is it your understanding that Labour plans to provide this clearer guidance and centralised administration of some aspects of the green belt as part of its plans?

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

If anything it's likely to increase

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.

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...

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.

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.

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’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.

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

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