Brownfield land should be used for quality affordable homes in Yorkshire - Jon Trickett

Nationally the proportion of housing units with planning permission on brownfield land in 2022 was 45 per cent, up by just one per cent from 2021. In our region it is only 40 per cent. Other regions also in desperate need of the levelling up opportunities the government promises us have particularly low figures, including the North West at 33 per cent and the West Midlands at 36 per cent. Yet, in my constituency of Hemsworth, there is executive housing popping up, just like this year’s bumper crop of tasty red rhubarb in its forced sheds, all over the greenbelt. This is deeply resented by my constituents. Our communities are in a constant battle to stop housing developments, such as the huge Huntwick Grange one in Featherstone, where 1,000 houses are planned and could see the destruction of many wildlife habitats.

This is why I challenged the housing minister Rachel Maclean in Parliament as to whether she’s happy that her government’s legacy will be that it poured cement and tarmac all over Yorkshire’s green and pleasant land.

She couldn’t answer me, of course. In her stumbling response she claimed the government could be “extremely proud of its legacy delivering affordable homes for first time buyers”, and that it was delivering its levelling up agenda with a “brownfield-first” approach.

If you watch the clip of our exchange on my social media, please forgive the slightly baffled look on my I have little clue as to where the affordable homes being built on brownfield sites in Hemsworth (or anywhere in Yorkshire) are. As the CPRE study says: The government’s levelling up agenda means that greater focus is needed on exactly those areas where greater investment in both jobs and affordable housing will help regenerate communities.

Yet the regional statistics are clear. And brownfield schemes such as the New Homes Bonus clearly favour southern regions over ours.

This is a disgrace. It’s not just about house building. Regeneration of brownfield sites often involves cleaning up contaminated land. Surely this needs to be prioritised to help boost public health and wellbeing as well as the environment of an area?

The Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto pledged to build 300,000 homes every year by the mid-2020s, yet their government has repeatedly missed its own housing targets. So a bit of advice for the housing minister: if she wants to hit those targets any time soon, she should stop the rhetoric and genuinely focus on building on brownfield land rather than allowing further incursions into the greenbelt.

Jon Trickett is the Labour MP for Hemsworth in West Yorkshire.