Labour 'grey belt' plans will not 'make significant difference' to house building, report finds

The Government has pledged that 1.5 million homes will be built in the five-year parliament, and to hit this target it has said it will review the green belt.

This is made up of buffer zones around cities such as Sheffield, Leeds and York, which limit building to prevent urban sprawl.

On top of that, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves also wants to encourage building on the grey belt, which refers to parts of the green belt, such as wasteland and old car parks, which appear like brownfield sites.

When giving speeches, Ms Reeves has repeatedly cited developing homes on the grey belt, as a key way of solving the country’s housing crisis.

In a letter to Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, chair of the Built Environment Committee, Lord Moylan, said peers “saw a lot of potential in the grey belt policy as originally conceived in the draft National Planning Policy Framework”.

However, the Tory said changes made to the NPPF since have watered down the impact of the proposal.

“This is particularly the case for grey belt land, the benefits of which we now believe will be marginal, at best,” he wrote.

“Moreover, in the absence of any clear understanding of how the success of the policy will be measured or monitored, we cannot see how the policy can be implemented or developed in a robust and coherent way.

“Ultimately, our assessment is that the grey belt policy has been implemented in a somewhat rushed and incoherent manner, and we do not believe that it is likely to have any significant or lasting impact on planning decision-making or on achieving your target of 1.5 million new homes by the end of this Parliament.”