Green belts and green fields

This summer has seen a great deal of campaigning and newspaper reporting about the draft National Planning Policy Statement and the presumption in favour of sustainable development. (And today the Government through Grant Shapps and the National Housing Federation has opened up a second front, calling for more housebuilding to address the housing shortage.)

Amidst the newspaper articles it is clear that there is huge confusion about what is meant by green belt. It is used as though it means green field – that is a site which is previously undeveloped. So I thought it would help to set out what a green belt is.

Green belts are specific areas in specific places. The first green belt was around London, created through the Green Belt (London and Home Counties) Act 1938. Nowadays several urban areas have green belts. There are fourteen specific areas designated in local plans and there are special national planning policies which limit what can be done in the green belt.

It does not help proper debate about this to see newspaper articles treating green belts and green fields as though they are the same. An example is the article I saw a couple of weeks ago about the Dungeness airport proposals, suggesting that there is a relaxation of green belt policy which is a threat to the bird reserve there. Green belt protection is absolutely irrelevant to that proposal.

It is important to maintain the distinction. Otherwise, it alarms people who do live in green belts, where the author of Open Source Planning says there is no threat from the reforms (John Howell, letters The Times, 9th August).

But we should also not overstate the protection afforded by green belts. The current adopted policy is PPS2 is that there is a presumption against inappropriate development there. And that very special circumstances are needed to rebut that presumption. There are also some things which are specifically called out as not being inappropriate.