Britain's Green Belt
BRITAIN'S GREEN BELT looks set to become the latest victim in the Government's lengthening trail of broken election pledges. Richard Caborn, the planning minister, recently summed up Labour's 'post-election' attitude to this last formal protective barrier against sprawling urban development, stating: "the Green Belt is up for grabs".
The Labour Government's u-turn on its pre-election pledge to hold firm against "inappropriate development in the Green Belt" came to light last month when it was revealed that Government pressure had forced Hertfordshire County Council to sanction an 1,950 acre development on greenfield land between Stevenage and Hitchin. The development, that could eventually run to 10,000 new houses, will provide the Council's 'share' of the 4.4 million new houses that Government officials have calculated will be needed over the next 20 years.
"This development represents the first shot in a new war over the Green Belt", warned a spokesman for the Council for the Protection of Rural England. "The policy of protecting the green belt of land around many towns and cities faces its strongest challenge in 50 years. Other councils - from Chester to Leeds to Newcastle upon Tyne -are now set to follow Hertfordshire's example.
The Green Belt policy was formalised back in 1938 in order to stem the ever-increasing march of urbanisation. It set out powers for local councils to acquire land to ensure it could not be built on and effectively threw a protective barrier around the countryside. Our new Labour government, however, seeks to pressurise local authorities into lifting this rural protection barrier, enabling the construction of some of the 4.4 million new houses it perceives as essential to meet Britain's housing needs into the next century.
While the government readily condemns vast tracts of our rapidly diminishing countryside to the concrete mixer, the area of derelict land within our towns and cities continues to increase. Such derelict land, according to the Council for the Protection of Rural England, now covers an area twice the size of Bristol and is causing severe social, environmental and economic costs on cities. Moreover, the problem of urban dereliction is growing fastest in the South East - the area where housing developers aim to provide a large number of the new houses. Indeed, the government's own advisory 'Panel on Sustainable Development' has suggested that 75% of the new houses needed, could be built on derelict land in towns. Advice, however, that will not be heeded by 'New Labour - in partnership with business' because urban renewal costs more and is less convenient to development companies than greenfield sites.
Clearly, Labour is prepared to sacrifice Britain's precious rural land to needless development in order to cement its close relationship with big business. One can only speculate on the purse the government will receive for this latest display of political corruption by the "peoples' representatives" - £1 ,000,000 perhaps?
This article first appeared in the now defunct 'vanguard' magazine, issue 52.