Green Belt rules may change under the new government. Within only days of being elected, Labour’s new Chancellor Rachel Reeves has stated the “urgent” need for planning reform and for new homes on ‘grey belt’ land, as well as more onshore wind farms. With so much green belt land in Kent, we look at whether the new government will soon decide some of it is ‘grey’ and get building.
.. Huge swathes of Kent consist of land which is green belt or otherwise protected, such as nature reserves and National Landscapes, formerly known as areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONBs).
About a fifth of the county’s land area is designated as Metropolitan green belt – designed explicitly to constrain the urban sprawl of London into the home counties by making it much harder to get permission to build. A further 23% falls within the Kent Downs National Landscape and 10% is the High Weald National Landscape – with some overlap between them and the green belt. But however green and pleasant the land is, the country is in a housing crisis.
Local authorities are responsible for getting homes built and the new government is promising to make them do it one way or another. Labour’s manifesto promised to “get Britain building again”, saying they will make sure 1.5 million homes are constructed over the next five years.
As part of this, local councils will once again be subject to strict mandatory targets for housebuilding. In a speech on Monday, new Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
