Has The 'Green Belt' Been Discreetly Abolished?

Grammaretto

A quick AI search tells me that 7,000 houses are empty including 1500 council houses.

8½ thousand houses are currently being built. Not all suitable no doubt but surely there's a saving to be had.

There are 28 million dwellings in the UK some are always going to be some unoccupied

That is 1 in 4000 if the figures are correct

We are according to developers, a small but vociferous locals opposed to applications to build on our green belt.
There are so many grey and brown areas nearer the town centre where the bus and train station are. Our public transport is poor. Our roads are clogged. So far two applications turned down at planning but hundreds more to be heard

David49

Grammaretto

A quick AI search tells me that 7,000 houses are empty including 1500 council houses.

8½ thousand houses are currently being built. Not all suitable no doubt but surely there's a saving to be had.

There are 28 million dwellings in the UK some are always going to be some unoccupied

That is 1 in 4000 if the figures are correct

Incorrect interpretation Granmatetto was meaning 7000 in Edinburgh only, it sounds a lot

Yes sorry I forgot to specify that those numbers I quoted refer to Edinburgh.

There are masses of brownfield sites around here that could be used but they seem to want to give permission to build in the green belt. Any council house that needs more than £10,000 spent on repairs is sold. Often the houses that are being built would be out of the price range of most couples.

Our council say we have 80% green spaces in our town, but a lot of that is school playing fields, the general public can’t use those areas to walk their dogs.

nexus63

something has to give as we need more housing, reading about a homeless shelter in glasgow that had no more space for people at the weekend and they had to put up tents outside on the street just to give people somewhere to sleep. people need homes and they need to be near places that they can work, with the population in the uk homes have to come first.

Those poor people won’t be buying a house tho will they?
Here in the SE of England every town and village just about has had thousands of houses built and nearly all expensive too.
Only a few proportionately are social housing. So I do think the green belt isn’t being treated as special now.

Grammaretto

Ofcourse people need to live somewhere and live in houses too.
But if you walk around the New Town (Georgian houses) of Edinburgh in winter after dark you'll see very few lights on.
The rich folk who own these big houses often have a 2nd home where they escape to the sun.

I think an investigation into land ownership is long overdue.

I was told how many thousands of empty houses there are in Edinburgh alone.

I'll go away and look it up.

Same here in many villages in the westcountry. Nobody needs two homes.
And although everyone says we need more homes, who are they for? I don’t know anyone who can’t find a house to buy.

We had 100 new houses built in the village about eight years ago, only six were social housing, the rest mostly 4 or 5 bedrooms. Now they are seeking to build another 2,500 homes but say no money for infrastructure. So school, doctors, roads will be totally inadequate for that size of population.

The land up for sale is mostly owned by the Oxford diocese and county council. The whole county will soon be a vast housing estate, the nearest towns have trebled in size since the sixties.

Same over here in Australia. Mostly hideous hi- rise that are a blot on the once beautiful landscape and are built on arable productive land. Build baby build seems to be the motto. However no one builds in the vast empty red heart because they haven’t the gumption to get water out there. Not like the Arab countries who have plenty of gumption in that regard.

nanna8

Same over here in Australia. Mostly hideous hi- rise that are a blot on the once beautiful landscape and are built on arable productive land. Build baby build seems to be the motto. However no one builds in the vast empty red heart because they haven’t the gumption to get water out there. Not like the Arab countries who have plenty of gumption in that regard.

I havnt seen or heard "gumption" for a very long time, then it pops up from down under.
Mother was from Lancashire and used it in the same context.

I had a very bleak account of a visit to Bolton which sounds as if shops have been boarded up and streets of houses left empty. What happened to levelling up?
Compare this with the South East where over crowded roads and continued loss of green belt keeps planning barristers in work. The population doesn’t have to all live near London does it?

Just over twice the size - (c) 244 sq km v. 552 (126%)
.
.

We are simply an overcrowded country.

Boarded up shops are being denied planning permission to change them into accommodation; not very old and under-utilised shopping malls are being demolished; partly due to WFH and the collapse of businesses, empty offices are disallowed to be converted into homes; I read recently of an entire housing estate which had not been completed and which was being left to rot.

It is a national disgrace that our green, pleasant and fertile agricultural land is being concreted over or having Milliband's flipping solar panels covering it up. What is wrong with commercial roofs? Of which there are acres.

And now the government is allowed to arbitrarily override any planning decisions made by local authorities (who are going to know the areas which they represent better than anyone sitting behind a desk in Whitehall).

This little island is over-populated.

It certainly is where I am. Housing absolutely everywhere with the usual lack of provision of medical services, schools, shops, leisure or even basic transport. The latest proposal is a massive data centre right at the back of a local village. This would be built on farmers fields. On the plans it runs the length of the village, towers above all the properties. The noise from the centre has been estimated to be horrendous and there is concern about the amount of water the plant will use. Once completed it's proposed it would employ approx 50 people, of course not necessarily locals. The landowner will be a multimillionaire if it goes ahead.

It is certainly disappearing here and brown sites are unused.

If Infrastructure was made the top thing to be considered before anything else then no one would complain about more houses being built! When we see greenfield being built on with houses for incomers not locals as locals cannot afford them & no Doctors, Dentist, Hospital yes we do get angry! Cannot get a doctors appointment as too many people chasing an appointment. Hospital appointment? Forget it! Use Brownfield sites & provide everything needed too then we may stop complaining!

Here in Buckinghamshire the local council and our local Beaconsfield MP are working flat out to prevent inappropriate development on green belt land. The NSIP (Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project) process has been devised to override local opposition to development and it is currently being used to dump a vast Data Centre a mile from our village. We will all carry on fighting!

It will be covered in data centres.

A lot of very good points made in this thread.
Of course up coming generations need housing to accommodate them and their families, but it did occur to me that maybe our government doesn't value British self sufficiency in food production, as successive governments have demonstrated by selling off or shutting down the country's other assets. I am thinking of the utilities, the coal mines, gas and oil, not to mention school land and NHS land and property.
When you look at the hard time the farmers have been having it's a wonder there are any remaining who want to do the work.
As I understand it - I am not linked to farming in any way other than living on the fringe of the countryside - farmers do not get subsidised to produce food for our nation. They often have to sell to huge supermarkets at a loss to themselves, and then they get landed with massive death duties most recently, which means many farming families will find themselves in a position where they can't afford to continue after a family death.
No wonder farmers are selling off their land.
It will be too late when the last piece of farmland has been sold off and concreted over.
Why can't we take a pride in producing British food, and support the farming industry while we still have it.
As has already been mentioned, focus should be on redeveloping brown belt sites, and inner city sites, where shopping areas have died a death due to the giant conglomerates who use economy of scale to undercut all the smaller businesses.
Making more wealth for the already mega wealthy tycoons.
Sorry for the rant! 🤯

Where I am (West Herts) the Green Belt has definitely been abolished, but not discreetly. Not only is massive housebuilding activity going on, far in excess of local needs, but a datacentre has been inflicted on Green Belt in our small town, directly in conflict with local democracy and with no apology or explanation. (Thank you Ms Rayner.) A certain Emily Thornberry said before the General Election "Of course we're not going to concrete over the Green Belt.". Absolute deception.

Loved Astitchintime's comment about greasing palms. Definitely still happening in Councils all over the country. A nods as good as wink etc.

Where l live the City Council has just given permission for a a development of 40 houses to be built on a site in a local park.

The site was owned by a local University that had been left to them by a well known textile industrialist which was inside the Park.

Big local.protest but to no avail.

I know this is not really a green belt matter and a one off.

But it just makes me think. If bits of our Parks can be up for grabs and are going to be sold off in the future?

Here we have protest from nimbys and environmentalists at almost every development - by the time there has been an appeal and changes made 5 yrs has passed. That why houses are not getting built.

However we do have one site that is not contentious, planning has been passed but there is no money to build the infrastructure to serve it. So they are starting from scratch and doubling the size to pay for it, Im not even sure that will be enough.

There were attempts a few years ago to grab some of the prime land in one of the city’s oldest parks to sell for development. The park was gifted “to the people of the city for their use in perpetuity” a hundred years ago. When the council”s plans came to light, the people of the city told the council in no uncertain terms to take a hike. Most of our parks now are kept going by “friends” groups and volunteers. They save the council a lot of money - and do a splendid job of keeping predators at bay!