A major housebuilder has thrown its weight behind government plans to release greenbelt land – but called for a rethink on the requirement for half of homes to be affordable.
Philip Barnes, land and planning director at Barratt Redrow, said he was “excited” by Labour’s policy of promoting building on the so-called greybelt – essentially low-quality land within the greenbelt.
The party outlined the plan when in opposition and held a consultation on proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework shortly after coming to power.
The House of Lords Built Environment Committee opened an inquiry into the government’s greybelt plans in September and called Barnes for evidence yesterday (5 November).
He said: “Barratt Redrow is very supportive of the proposals and very hopeful that with minor changes they should significantly increase supply, importantly in sustainable locations on the edges of cities and towns. The extent [of the increase] depends on the final policy.”
Barnes told the committee that greybelt releases could spark construction of 50,000 homes per year from 2026.
Labour in April set out the requirements that would be placed on housebuilders developing such land. As well as investing in local infrastructure and services and improving ‘genuine green spaces’, they would have to ensure half of homes created were affordable.
“The 50 per cent is subject to viability but the requirement is still a huge disincentive for a developer to set out on the process of buying a site, investing in it, getting planning permission and then entering a viability process with an uncertain outcome,” Barnes told peers this week.
“It would be a major disincentive to Barratt, a huge disincentive to SMEs. What certainty could they give to funders of a return?”
Rather than a requirement for 50 per cent of homes to be affordable, developers of speculative schemes could be asked to target 10 percentage points above existing local targets, Barnes suggested.
He also called for a series of technical amendments to the government’s proposed definition of greybelt to aid its release by councils.
Paul Cheshire, emeritus professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, said last week that without an extremely precise definition of the greybelt and a stronger presumption in favour of building on it, there would be “no significant change at all” in the number of houses built under the government’s proposals.
