Concrete threat to land in Home Counties
Every election has its cliché. That of 2005 will be remembered for "the elephant in the room''.
This phrase was applied to any issue that the speaker felt was being ignored: Europe, welfare reform, global warming. But the real "elephant in the room'', in the sense of something that kept coming up on doorsteps but not in the media, was planning.
Across the Midlands and the South of England, people were worried about the crowding of new houses on their remaining green spaces. They fretted that, with thousands of new people moving into their localities, there would be no infrastructure to match. Roads would become congested, and schools oversubscribed; hospital waiting lists would lengthen, and countryside would retreat. Because such concerns were, by definition, local, they were generally ignored by national newspapers. This only served to add to people's sense of frustration. They felt that no one was listening and that, however they voted, nothing would halt the ineluctable spread of concrete.
They were right. As we report today, the Green Belt is shrinking alarmingly. There is a difference, of course, between the Green Belt and development more generally. Green Belt land falls into a specific legal category: it is hard for private citizens to build on it, but easy for the Government to do so. No less ambitious a feat of construction than the M25 cuts through Green Belt territory. Indeed, some argue that the preservation of the Green Belt pushes developers into much prettier countryside farther from the cities. In this instance, though, the thinning of the Green Belt has done nothing to alleviate the pressure on rural communities. Under John Prescott's housing targets, much of the South-East, in particular, will become a more or less continuous metropolis, an extension of Greater London, in which today's towns and villages retain their separate identities only in the sense that Hammersmith and Fulham do.
Why is this happening at a time when our birth rate has been falling for some 40 years? There are two separate answers. One has to do with the demand side. The Deputy Prime Minister's declared targets almost exactly match the number of net immigrants into Britain. Because newcomers do not usually settle in the Home Counties, people often fail to make the connection. But it is this net influx, combined with the escalating rate of family break-up - each requiring two homes in place of one - that accounts for the continuing pressure on space. On the supply side, planning regulations in effect encourage building on Greenfield sites. Developers would much rather buy farmland, square the local council with sweeteners, and have a guaranteed profit, than renovate old houses. Neither of these things looks likely to change, for we have just re-elected the Government responsible for our present discontents. By the time we get the chance to vote again, it will, for many, be too late.
Source: The Telegraph
Date: Monday 6th June, 2005
