Could green belt land be turned into thousands of homes under grey belt rules?

In its 2024 general election manifesto, the Labour Party set an ambitious target of building 1.5 million new homes over the course of a Parliamentary term.  In order to achieve this, in July 2024, the newly elected Labour Government announced its ‘Grey Belt Policy’ within its draft revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

The NPPF defined the grey belt as “land in the green belt comprising previously developed land and/or any other land that, in either case, does not strongly contribute to any of the following purposes in paragraph 143 of the NPPF : (a) to check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas; (b) to prevent neighbouring towns merging into one another; and (d) to preserve the setting and special character of historic towns”.

In British town planning, the green belt was established over 70 years ago as a policy for controlling urban growth, keeping land permanently open.  However, the ‘Green Belt Policy’ has been criticised for reducing the amount of land available for building and therefore pushing up house prices.  The greatest cost of building new houses is the purchase of the land.

The grey belt is a term used by the Government to describe under-utilised or poor quality areas of land in the green belt.  It includes previously developed land, car parks, waste lands, and poor quality scrub land.  It was anticipated that grey belt areas could be identified and developed, with development meeting the following “golden rules” (guidelines on contributions that should be made when developing housing on land released from the green belt):

1. Affordable housing which reflects either (i) development plan policies produced in accordance with paragraphs 67-68 of the NPPF or (ii) until such policies are in place, the policy set out in paragraph 157
2. Necessary improvements to local and national infrastructure
3. Provision of new or improvements to existing green spaces that are accessible to the public.

Developments which complied with the “golden rules” were to be given significant weight in favour of being granted permission.

Last autumn, the House of Lords’ Built Environment Committee launched an inquiry into grey belt land to gain a better understanding of what grey belt is, how it could contribute to housing targets, and what sustainable green belt development looks like.  It initially considered this new category could make a positive contribution to meeting new housing targets.

However, on 5th February this year, BBC News reported that the Government’s idea of re-designating areas as grey belt was largely redundant. Land will be more likely be released from the green belt through existing channels instead.  For example, there is now a requirement for councils to review green belt boundaries and suggest changes to the boundaries if they cannot meet their housing targets.  Under new rules, the Government has said that building on green belt land will be allowed if other options have been exhausted.    The chair of the Built Environment Committee (Lord Moylan) had said that changes announced in the  NPPF would mean that the impact of the grey belt would be “at best, marginal”.  Other reports suggest the Government’s policy had been implemented in a rushed and incoherent manner with no plan to measure progress or determine the success of their policy.  The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which monitors the UK Government’s spending plans and performance, made a press release on 26 March in which they forecast that changes to the UK’s planning system will result in ‘housebuilding being at its highest level in over 40 years’.

It is forecast that the changes to councils’ mandatory housing targets, and making it easier to build on green belt land could result in 1.3 million new homes across the UK by the end of this Parliament.   Maybe another coloured belt was not required after all.

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