A damning new report has laid bare the extent to which the government’s much-trumpeted grey belt policy is undermining protections for the countryside surrounding London, raising serious questions about one of Labour’s flagship planning reforms.
The study, jointly published by the London Green Belt Council and CPRE Hertfordshire, accuses ministers of presiding over a fundamental contradiction at the heart of their housing strategy. Labour’s 2024 election manifesto committed the party to preserving the Green Belt, pledging to maintain both its purpose and general extent. Yet the findings suggest the reality on the ground tells a starkly different story.
When the grey belt concept was first introduced, the government sought to reassure the public that only genuinely degraded land, abandoned car parks, derelict petrol stations and the like, would be earmarked for housing. The report demolishes that narrative. Its central finding is that the definition of grey belt has proved so expansive that virtually any parcel of Green Belt land is now vulnerable to development.
The numbers are striking. In Hertfordshire alone, 89 per cent of the 35 planning applications submitted on Green Belt land last year involved sites that developers classified as grey belt. More troubling still, over 80 per cent of planning appeals in the London Green Belt between February and December 2024 were approved on grey belt grounds, more than double the proportion that would ordinarily have succeeded on any basis whatsoever.
One King’s Counsel has described the situation in unsparing terms, calling it virtually impossible to contest such applications following what amounts to a seismic reversal of policy affecting hundreds of sites across the country. Developers, unsurprisingly, are moving swiftly to capitalise.
Local authorities find themselves in an unenviable position. Councils are being compelled to reclassify previously protected land as grey belt, and the report confirms that the overwhelming majority of sites opened up in this manner comprise good quality countryside and productive agricultural land rather than the disused brownfield sites the public was led to expect.
The report’s conclusions are pointed. It argues that the government regards the Green Belt as having negligible economic value unless it is built upon, a philosophical stance that, if left unchallenged, would leave no part of the protected landscape secure from the ambitions of housebuilders.
Perhaps the most politically uncomfortable finding concerns the sheer scale of unbuilt planning permissions already in the system. More than 1.4 million homes granted consent since 2017 have yet to be constructed, while a comparable number could be accommodated on genuinely previously developed brownfield land. The sacrifice of Green Belt, the report argues, is simply unnecessary.
Public opinion appears firmly on the side of the countryside. A recent poll conducted by More in Common on behalf of CPRE found that 86 per cent of respondents consider Green Belt protections important, with strong appetite for prioritising brownfield development instead.
For ministers, the challenge is now clear. A policy designed to demonstrate pragmatism on housing delivery risks becoming a political liability if it continues to be perceived as a developers’ charter dressed up in the language of responsible reform.
