Page last updated 23rd July 2024

The green belt continues to be central to our campaigning work.
What is the green belt?
Why do we care so much about protecting it?
NOTE:
Now that there is a General Election on July 4th 2024, there is some confusion on what happens Now and Next. So watch this space.

What is the Green Belt?

Green Belts are areas of land that are protected from most forms of development. Local Planning Authorities are responsible for designating land as ‘Green Belt’ through powers established in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. The designation is formalised in Local Plans, which set policies for the local area. Local Plans are used to inform decisions on development, ensuring it is sustainable, meets relevant policies and guidance and reflects local needs.

The importance of protecting green belt land?

Green belt designation is the result of positive planning. It stops urban sprawl and encourages the vital regeneration of local towns and cities. It provides the countryside as part of our neighbourhood and, though not the principal purpose, it protects the attractive landscapes so important to our environment, heritage and wellbeing.

Without the green belt, we would have the urban sprawl just across the street. Both UN-Habitat and the European Commission have highlighted the particular problems arising from uncontrolled urban sprawl around towns and cities. Sprawl has all kinds of negative impacts, including loss of farmland and wildlife, increased car use, and neglect of older towns and cities.

Natural England analysis conducted in 2010 shows that the rate of development in green belts is between 33% and 50% lower than comparable areas of land on the edge of English cities without green belt designation.

Nationally there is a housing crisis and there is a need to build more well-designed, well-located and affordable homes. Some believe that building on the green belt is a solution to the housing crisis – partly because of its proximity to cities, and partly due to its ‘low environmental value’. All we need to do, they argue, is to relax the designation. Hence the creation of the The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill.

Our local authority is arguing that ‘exceptional circumstances’, as set out in planning policy, exist to justify building up to 1,200 new houses on the Fellgate green belt land of supposedly low environmental value. But this severely underestimates the wide range of benefits that the green belt offers. Previous studies from 2014 onwards has constantly stated that the green belt land is unsuitable for future housing.

Our Green belt land includes significant local biodiversity and heritage assets, but it also captures carbon, provides space for water to prevent flooding, and protects the water supply.

The Natural Capital Committee in January 2015 called for the creation of 250,000 hectares of woodland and 100,000 hectares of wetland close to urban areas as the best way to maintain existing green belt policy, rather than weaken it. Furthermore, most of our green belt – about two-thirds – is in agricultural use. As such this cannot be considered of low environmental value when global population growth and climate change are putting increasing pressure on land, and when we grow less than two-thirds of our own food. Now, more than ever, we need to avoid unnecessarily losing our countryside.

The solution is simple, the redevelopment of brownfield sites – ‘previously developed’ land. Derelict sites close to economic and social opportunities should not be ignored in favour of cheaper or more convenient sites for developers. Crucially, there is plenty of brownfield land available for development.

In November 2014, a CPRE report found that there were enough sites to accommodate at least one million new homes – even after setting aside those brownfield sites that were of recreational or wildlife value, or could be developed for other purposes such as employment. Significantly, the research also found that brownfield land is far from drying up: more brownfield land became available between 2010 and 2012 than was developed. Efforts to tackle the housing crisis must as a priority use brownfield and unused land and not green belt land. There’s really no need for either major releases of green belt land or wholesale changes to policy, when we have such a plentiful range of other options available.

In the Tyne and Wear area there is significant amounts of unused and brown field land that is available for housing, South Tyneside is a land locked authority that is constrained by Sunderland, Gateshead and the river Tyne, both of these authorities has significant land for housing. In effect, housing requirements and allocation could be solved if all the local authorities worked as one and use the land effectively without encroaching on Green Belt and Green Space land.

Levelling up and Regeneration Act 2023 (LURA).
The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill received Royal Assent on 26th October 2023.
The Act follows the Government’s “Levelling Up the United Kingdom” White Paper, which was issued in February 2022 and, according to the Government, will speed up the planning system, hold developers to account, cut bureaucracy, and encourage more councils to put in place plans to enable the building of new homes.

This Act is very long, at over 500 pages, and, although the Act itself has received Royal Assent, very few of the key provisions have actually come into force and a number of these will be subject to further regulations which will provide the detail.

• Many provisions in the Levelling up and Regeneration Act 2023 will not be immediately effective, as they are subject to necessary further secondary legislation and changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (last published Dec 2023). Leading commentary has likened the Levelling up and Regeneration Act 2023 to a “prelude to numerous new regulations on numerous topics, and is therefore more of a work in progress at this stage”.
  
• The Government’s Levelling up and Regeneration Act 2023 consultation document gives an indication of statutory implementation dates for some of the changes, particularly in the context of plan-making. In this document, the Government anticipates that reforms to the plan-making system will be implemented from late 2024, and have set out a proposed timeline for altering to this new system:

30 June 2025: cut-off date for old-style plans to be submitted for examination
Plan makers will need to submit their local plans, neighbourhood plans, minerals and waste plans, and spatial development strategies for independent examination under the existing legal framework before 30 June 2025.

31 December 2026: latest date for any old-style local and minerals and waste plans to be adopted 
All independent examinations of local plans, minerals and waste plans and spatial development strategies must be concluded, with plans adopted, by 31 December 2026.

April 2027
First new-style plans to be adopted.

With a general election happening, there is uncertainty as to when these reforms will actually be brought forward or if they will be changed.
As such, much of the Levelling up and Regeneration Act 2023 will not come into force until the Secretary of State introduces Regulations to that effect.

In other words, nothing much can occur until the results of the General Election.