On Grey Belt

Picture the scene. In the back of a taxi on the way to giving a speech about housing, a Minister, long-enough in post to have become sufficiently well-read on housing need and brownfield capacity, solicits ideas from their team on how to take the public on a journey that ends with the building of houses on land currently in the Green Belt.

“Come on people! "We need something between ‘brownfield first’, which is clearly not enough, and protecting genuine nature spots, which is clearly a given."

“Grey Belt, Minister?”

“Go on...”

“Well, poor-quality scrubland, mothballed on the outskirts of town, like that disused garage in Tottenham that Siobhan McDonagh keeps going on about*. We can prioritise ugly, disused grey belt land, and set tough new conditions for releasing it.”

“Splendid...”

That may or may not be how Grey Belt came into being (it is interesting to note that unlike the stock-based standard method and a national scheme of delegation it is not a concept that, as far as I am aware, anybody within the profession has been promoting), but into being it now is and it is we planners that are now tasked with turning concept into reality.

Given the ambition of significantly boosting the supply of land in sustainable locations in the very shortest of terms (if 1.5 million new homes within the Parliament is to get anywhere remotely close to being achieved…), the role of Grey Belt is more important in development management terms than in plan-making.

This is because the process by which a LPA wishing to make Green Belt allocations is long-established, well-understood and arguably unaffected by Grey Belt. If brownfield sites within the urban area have been exhausted, if densities have been optimised, and if agreement with neighbouring authorities about contributing to unmet need cannot be reached, then, at least prior to the December 2022 NPPF, the exceptional circumstances required to amend a Green Belt boundary can exist. With that threshold reached a Green Belt Assessment would consider the strategic, functional role of the wider Green Belt and then the individual roles of specific parcels of land against the five tests of Green Belt, with a view to identifying those that make the weakest contribution and so may be the most suitable for release. This process is colour blind in that the greenness, brownness or greyness of the most suitable is immaterial.

The issue has been, is and will still likely be for some time yet, how long it takes to go through this process. As a point of principle the proposed NPPF unequivocally states that LPAs are to “meet an area’s identified housing need” rather than “meet as much of an area’s identified housing need as possible” and LPAs should undertake a Green Belt review where they are unable to meet housing, commercial or other needs without altering Green Belt boundaries. These positive statements of intent for the shorter-term, combined with the universal strategic planning coverage for the longer-term, should have the effect of shortening local plan timescales.

The local plan process is time-consuming and coverage is poor, especially in Green Belt areas, where housing need can often be most acute and land supply most poor. Despite this, demonstrating ‘very special circumstances (VSC)’ by way of a planning application is a high bar for the owners of sensible, sustainable Green Belt sites to get over. Where the Grey Belt proposition stands to add most value then is by enabling sites that would/could/should be allocated in local plans to come forward earlier than would otherwise be the case. It offers a third route towards establishing the principle of development that could be less time-consuming than a local plan allocation and less costly and risky than a VSC application, but the speed at which land comes forward will be subject to how Grey Belt is ultimately defined.

In the run up to the general election Grey Belt announcements had asserted that it would be “a new class of land to ensure grey and poor-quality parts of the Green Belt are prioritised, and that any development benefits local communities”. It went on to state that “poor-quality and ugly areas of the Green Belt should be clearly prioritised over nature-rich, environmentally valuable land. At present, beyond the existing brownfield category the system does not differentiate between them. This category will be distinct to brownfield with a wider definition.”

This could have been done by defining Grey Belt in explicit, objective terms and then defining the circumstances under which the development of Grey Belt sites would be supported (outwith an allocation in a local plan).

Such a definition could have included, for example:

• Land that is or has been occupied by a permanent structure that is not captured by the current definition of PDL (so, for example, agricultural and forestry buildings were they not to be defined as PDL);
• Land on the edge of urban areas that is or has been used for recreation (e.g. golf courses), but that excludes playing fields; and
• Land that has been significantly influenced or defined by the urbanising effects of development, transport infrastructure or non-agricultural human activity (e.g. ‘rounding off’ a settlement inside a road or railway).

Instead, the Government is proposing to constrain the identification of Grey Belt to existing (and relatively longstanding) Green Belt policy parameters, namely the five purposes, alongside a proposal that the typical characteristics of Grey Belt are to be set out in an appendix. The Government's proposal is an understandable reinterpretation of the Labour Party's initial proposals, but, on first inspection, inevitably creates a more abstract, subjective approach to its identification.

In land supply terms, the benefit of the former option would be to offer clear, unequivocal support for the type of sites upon which the principle of development would be supported and the circumstances under which that would be the case. On the one hand, landowners and their development partners would be able to commit to the cost of a planning application with certainty and confidence, but, on the other hand, a strict definition would inevitably place an upper limit on the amount of such sites in any given area.

The benefits of the latter option are the opposite. On one hand, a broader definition increases the number of sites that could conceivably be supported in any given area and at any given time, but the more subjective definition increases the chances that a LPA may come to a different conclusion on the extent to which a site makes a limited contribution to the five purposes. This will reduce the certainty and confidence with which landowners and their development partners can commit to the cost of a planning application relative to onward promotion through the local plan process.

That being said, on second, third and fourth inspection, the process for identifying Grey Belt sites, as Simon Ricketts told the House of Lords Built Environment Committee (HoLBEC) is actually more objective than may have been interpreted initially.

There are six elements and checks on what amounts to grey belt within the definition of grey belt itself: for a start, we have the limited contribution to the five green-belt purposes; secondly, we have the exclusion of land designated for various environmental reasons—a reference to what is known as footnote 7; the land must be in a sustainable location—the third check; the development must not fundamentally undermine the function of the green belt across the area of the plan as a whole—the fourth check; fifthly, there has to be a demonstrable need for additional housing or, in the case of non-residential development, whatever the other form of development may be; lastly, the series of tests in paragraph 155, which are the so-called golden rules, need to be achieved, including 50 per cent affordable housing, if that is viable. So, to my mind, it is quite a constrained test. It is no less vague than the “very special circumstances” test. If all those criteria are met, in many cases an applicant might think that it was approaching a position whereby it would succeed under the very special circumstances test in any event.

The subjectivity is inherent only in the Green Belt Assessment process because, whilst the process through which a view as to the contribution an individual parcel of land makes to the five purposes is relatively well known and understood, past Governments have resisted producing any guidance or standardised methodologies to ensure consistency in approach or to provide clear thresholds for judgements. If the Grey Belt proposition does have a material impact on land coming forward, then there will be a greater reliance on Green Belt Assessments for development management purposes and it is essential then to the successful implementation of Grey Belt policy that the methodology for undertaking and evaluating such documents be standardised.

Richard Seaman at Calderdale Council told the HoLBEC:

There are some issues with the wording. There is “not strongly perform”, “no or very little contribution”, “little contribution” and “contributes little”. All those words create a lot of potential for lawyers to argue at great length.

With the language tightened though, as well as the relationship between what is in the NPPF and what is to be in PPG clarified; recognition that Green Belt of strategic importance functions across LPA areas; and with not all Footnote 7 designations excluded (as would be the case as drafted), the Grey Belt proposition clearly has the potential to significantly boost the supply of land for development in sustainable locations.

Whatever Grey Belt grows up to be, it is, firstly, welcome recognition, in political terms, that the homes the country needs cannot be built without developing land that is currently identified as Green Belt. The irresistible force has started to shift the immoveable object. The very fact that Green Belt is being talked about is a 180 degree turn from where we were a matter of months ago and, who knows, but maybe these conversations prompt further ones about what Green Belt should actually be for and, you never know, a Royal Commission…

In the meantime though Grey Belt is also recognition that in practical, development management terms, sustainable sites must be allowed to come forward ahead of local plan reviews.

As Stephen Kelly at the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service told the HoLBEC:

We have undertaken a comprehensive Green Belt study in Greater Cambridge. We have a clear understanding of all the land within the Green Belt and are able to identify and distinguish differences between low-quality land in the Green Belt and the higher-quality land that serves and is central to the purposes of Green Belt.

Right then. Let’s get that low-quality land built on.

*Despite, as you can see above, it clearly being PDL, the development of which the NPPF already supports.