Peter Nottage: Green belt just too important to be mediocre

We want to begin an informed debate on the benefits of green belts and how they can be better used and enhanced – recognising that this issue is often a deeply controversial subject.

In many ways, this vociferous reaction is heartening. It illustrates people's deeply-held affection for green spaces, for the countryside and for places to enjoy the natural world.

And for that reason we have not run away from the debate, because green belts cover 2.1 per cent of Yorkshire, and England's 14 green belts total almost 13 per cent of England's land area – a similar area to our areas of outstanding natural beauty and nearly twice as much as our national parks.

We rightly treat these protected landscapes with special care – they are strategically managed with the natural environment in mind.

But the green belt – this huge and immensely valuable environmental resource that encircles 60 per cent of the population – has never been looked at that way.

It is a planning designation – there to stop the march of urban England, to keep people and the countryside apart – a barrier, buffer, a break.

Now, with help from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, British Trust for Ornithology, Sheffield University, Butterfly Conservation, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Sustain and Myerscough College, who have all provided important information and expertise, we have produced a comprehensive assessment of England's 14 green belts.

In Yorkshire, our two areas of green belt circle York and the conurbations of South and West Yorkshire. The latter's boundary runs north from the western edges of Chesterfield and surrounds Sheffield and South Yorkshire. It heads north-west to the South Pennines hills, around Huddersfield, Halifax up to Ilkley and Otley, brushing the Yorkshire Dales national park boundary. It skirts the south of Harrogate before leading back down, incorporating Wetherby, Pontefract, Wakefield, the western and southern fringe of Doncaster and Rotherham.

The report shows that the green belt is fulfilling its purposes – to restrict development, to curtail urban sprawl and to maintain the unique character of some of the most historic towns. A purpose of the York green belt was to ensure views of the Minster from the rural hinterland and preserve the city's historic setting.

It can be argued, then, that this safeguard serves its purpose if it does only these things. It does not have to be beautiful or well-used or rich in wildlife.

I think it is time that we asked if the green belt is too important to be condemned to eternal mediocrity.

It is now more than 60 years since England's architecture of

environment protection was put in place – the green belt, like our national parks and national nature reserves, was conceived to answer the pressing issues of post-war Britain.

Now we have new challenges – the ongoing decline of the natural world, the need for energy and climate security in a low-carbon economy, higher-than-average regional child and adult obesity levels,

disconnection from the natural world and the very real need to adapt to a changing climate.

The green belts can help tackle all those challenges, especially as

they are close to our most populated areas.

This means it is time to see this planning tool as much more than a designation. It is an immensely important environment resource with a vital role to play in the nation's future – it can do more to provide attractive landscapes, wildlife habitats, places for recreation, healthy soils for agriculture and woodland.

It is time to explicitly recognise the vital environmental role that the green belt could play. And to think how we might link the 14 green belts, and the undeveloped urban fringe around other towns and cities, to our national parks, and areas of outstanding natural beauty, our nature reserves and sites of special scientific interest.

Only this way can we establish a robust ecological network – green spokes bringing nature into the heart of our cities. And green

corridors connecting the remaining strongholds for the natural environment across the country.

Defenders of the green belt have nothing to fear from this. It is true that the green belt was never intended to preserve natural beauty, to conserve wildlife, or to enrich people's lives. But isn't time it did?

Peter Nottage is Natural England's regional director for Yorkshire and the Humber. Its report on green belts can be found at