Grey belt could deliver 3.4m new homes - here’s where the most grey belt sites are located in Yorkshire
New research suggests that local authorities in Yorkshire are sitting on a large proportion of newly-classifield grey belt land.
Coined by the new Labour government, grey belt is defined as land within the green belt consisting of previously developed and poorly performing land, which largely focuses on poor quality land, car parks and wastelands, poor quality scrubland, disused petrol stations and any land which does not affect the beauty of the countryside.
Data from development site sourcing specialist Searchland shows that there are currently an estimated 30,597 grey belt sites across England, enough to deliver 3.4m homes to the market if developed.
Regionally, the North West is home to the largest number of grey belt sites at 5,858, accounting for 19 per cent of the national total.
There is also a high proportion across the South East (18 per cent), East of England (16 per cent), Yorkshire and the Humber (15 per cent) and West Midlands (15 per cent).
At local authority level, Kirklees is home to the most grey belt sites, according to Searchland’s data. The area is thought to have an estimated 1,005 grey belt sites, enough to deliver 104,487 new homes to market.
Further down the top 10 list with respect to the most grey belt sites, other Yorkshire local authorities include Leeds, with 687 grey belt sites, Bradford with 672, Wakefield with 670, and Calderdale with 569 sites.
Hugh Gibbs, inset, co-founder of Searchland, said: “Building on the green belt has been a hot topic for many years, and whilst those campaigning against concreting over the countryside are right to do so, there are swathes of land that don't look like the beautiful rolling countryside you'd imagine.
"So it’s great to see that our new Labour government has decided to act with a degree of common sense by bringing in the grey belt classification and identifying the areas of wrongly classified green belt that are ripe for development.”
He added: “As our data shows, this could help boost the level of new homes reaching the market by 3.4m properties, which is more than double Labour’s ambitious target of 1.5m homes by 2030.”
Searchland’s internal data highlights the estimated number of grey belt sites found across each local authority in England, with Searchland also calculating how many homes could be delivered to the market if all of these grey belt sites were to be developed.
Almost 25,000 new homes will need to be built every year in Yorkshire, the Government says, if it is to meet its commitment for 1.5m nationally by 2029.
Detailed changes to planning laws were released last month, including housing targets for each local authority.
North Yorkshire received the highest target among the districts, boroughs and cities, with 4,077 new homes expected to be built annually, followed by Leeds, with 3,811.
In September, Skipton and Ripon MP Sir Julian Smith said in a letter to Angela Rayner that North Yorkshire Council is currently required to deliver 1,384 new homes per year but averages around 2,800 new homes per year.
The Government said there aren’t enough brownfield sites for the number of homes needed.
Councils will therefore also be ordered to review their green belt boundaries to meet targets by identifying lower quality “grey belt” land that could be built on in the local area.