The Government is right to look at building on more greenbelt land to help deal with the housing crisis, a leading property association said.
Pressure is building on ministers to use greenbelt sites to build the hundreds of thousands of new homes required to help solve the property shortage.
Now the National Association of Property Buyers have backed the idea saying “big problems require big solutions”. Spokesman Jonathan Rolande said:
“Whatever people think about the rights and wrongs of building on land that is there to specifically prevent urban sprawl, the pressure can only be a good thing. The problems surrounding our housing market are so deep-rooted, their impact so serious we need to look at everything. Big problems require big solutions.”
Mr Rolande continued to say that millions are locked out of the property marker with “little hope” of ever owning their own home “thanks to prices that are still way above” the normal income ratio. He added:
“Nobody wants to see green and pleasant land ripped up and developed, even to provide much-needed housing. But many areas within the greenbelt have previously been used for commercial property. Why should these be protected by a blanket ban?”
Explaining the role brownfield sites alone will play in solving the problem, he said:
“The hope is of course that development will take place on brownfield sites, often within existing towns and cities. There is room for 1.1m new homes on such sites, enough to hit the recent target of 300,000 new homes a year four times over.
But there is a deeper issue. With only about 2% of the UK built-on, there is frankly no shortage of land to build. The real problem is with the planning system that delays and blocks applications, the willingness of private companies to build homes in a difficult market and the profit margin expected for land and new home sales that inevitably pushes up the price. Housing is one of the most difficult issues the Government faces right now, but failure to do so will be immeasurably worse.”
