RDA explores applicatory potential of Labour’s ‘grey belt’ whitepaper

The Starmer Administration’s proposals to amend the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) promise to fundamentally change developers’ understanding of ‘green belt’ land.

For the first time since the concept was passed into Law in 1947, the circuit of land surrounding Britain’s principal towns and cities will be categorised into two tiers: a ‘beautiful’ high-value greenbelt which remains protected under the strictest of planning measures; and an ‘ugly’ grey belt which can be developed for housing with little to no opposition from local authority planning officers.

The announcement is a source of consternation for stakeholders in these regions, and rightly so given the inevitable threats posed to wildlife and quality of life in the midst of the Climate and the Biodiversity Emergency. And yet it is nevertheless an unsurprising and pragmatic move, given the trend of exempting developers from greenbelt policy which gradually emerged over the past two decades, as Britain has struggled to respond to a housing crisis.

What Labour propose to introduce is neither a new land category nor a legal mechanism for determining the distinction between attractive and unattractive land, but rather a targeted land release policy designed to mitigate the visual impact of case-by-case land release schemes. Like the developers involved in creating the garden cities of the 1910s and 20s, the satellite towns of the 1960s and 70s, and the highly successful city of Milton Keynes, today’s local authority planning officers have been advised to coordinate their approaches to greenfield development. They are encouraged to prioritise the infill of visually ‘developed’ spaces over construction in areas of natural beauty, and to only permit urban extensions which are proportionate to their surroundings. Thus, it is thought they will make positive contributions to the urban environment, creating more engaging, dynamic, and walkable communities.

The concept remains opaque and uncertainties about how the ‘grey belt’ might be interpreted by planners remain, but the endurance of the policy through the course of the general election and into government administration means it has had good time to mature. On the campaign trail, the party identified specific examples of sites which could be developed, including but not limited to: poor-quality land and wastelands; mothballed scrubland on the outskirts of towns and cities; and car parks or petrol stations. In the months since, they have identified others, and they continue to extend, revise, and refine the list as they respond to public scrutiny on a national level.

Rodić Davidson have been working in the London greenbelt for some time, and in so doing they have developed an innovative and informed approach to greenfield planning, conducted with a view to minimising visual acuity without compromising architectural quality. As greenbelt land is released sensibly and with respect for potential visual and environmental impacts, they welcome the opportunity to become a force for positive change on the urban fringe.

Their revived home counties farmsteads should be taken as evidence that greenbelt development does not necessarily need to mean suburbanisation. By deploying traditional materials and evoking the forms of the local agricultural vernacular, the developments are highly accessible, comfortable, but also very much at home in the English countryside. They demonstrate that there is demand for an architecture of place in the hinterland as well as the urban core.