Nicholas Soames, MP for Mid Sussex, this week put his support behind the campaign to protect and extend the Green Belt. Marking the creation of Green Belt protection fifty years ago – by a Conservative Government - the Campaign to Protect Rural England has warned that the Green Belt is now under great threat from development pressures and government policy. They have also called for more countryside to be designated as Green Belt.

Nicholas Soames explained; “Green Belt protection has a vital role to play in preventing urban sprawl and protecting the environment. I believe more green field land should be designated as Green Belt around towns and villages to prevent over-development. Yet the Labour Government is moving in the opposite direction by removing swathes of the Green Belt and transferring powers to the unelected regional assemblies to bulldoze England’s green fields. The Green Belt has served us well for the last half century – but I now fear it faces an uncertain future in the years ahead.”

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Notes to Editors

Green Belts are designated in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland to restrict the sprawl of built-up areas and to preserve the character of historic towns. Around 13 per cent of all land in England is classed as Green Belt.

Green Belts were formally introduced by 1955 by a Conservative Government. The then Minister for Housing and Local Government, Duncan Sandys, told Parliament, ‘for the well-being of our people and for the preservation of the countryside, we have a clear duty to do all we can to prevent the further unrestricted sprawl of the great cities’ (Hansard, 26 April 1955, Col. 45W).

CPRE Green Belt Campaign

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) have launched a campaign highlighting how the Green Belt is under threat and calling for more land to be given Green Belt protection. They warn, “a pattern is emerging of sustained attacks on Green Belts across the country. And the biggest source of this pressure is Government policy... We stand on the brink of massive and unprecedented loss of long-protected Green Belt land. Unlike today, losses in the past were small in scale and usually not a direct result of Government policy” (CPRE Press Release, “As Green Belts reach their half century, they’re in big trouble”, 25 May 2005). Click here for CPRE link

How the Green Belt is under threat

• The Government have admitted that an average of a thousand hectares of undeveloped Green Belt is being built on every year. In the last year for which figures are available, 45 hectares were lost in the North East, 110 in the North West, 60 in Yorkshire & the Humber, 70 in the East Midlands, 75 in the West Midlands, 50 in the East of England, 15 in London, 430 in the South East, and 115 in the South West (Hansard, 30 April 2004, Col. 1332W). Click here for publications

• The unelected regional assemblies are currently drawing up ‘regional spatial strategies’ that impose binding regional housebuilding targets on local councils, and in many cases, are instructing councils to ‘review’ or delete Green Belt protection. John Prescott’s Communities Plan is also forcing Green Belt to be deleted in key ‘urban growth areas’.

• The Treasury’s Barker Review, on which future government policy is being based, has called for further relaxation of planning protection for greenfield and Green Belt land. ‘Planning authorities should show greater flexibility in using their existing powers to change Green Belt designations where there are strong pressure points in a particular urban area.” It advocates, “moving towards an alternative approach, whereby land for development is assessed according to its relative value to society, presents challenges, including the implication that some Green Belt land should be re-designated’ (HM Treasury, Barker Review, Review of Housing Supply – Final Report, 2004. pp.44).