Look to the green belt: Paper calls for radical changes to land near train stations in bid to solve housing crisis
Freeing up green belt land near train stations could pave the way for the construction of 1.5m new houses, according to a report which seeks to tackle London’s chronic shortage of affordable housing.
Radical proposals that call on the government to loosen development restrictions around green belt areas within a half-mile radius of train stations have been unveiled today by Freer, an initiative set up by think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Conservative MP Simon Clarke, the author of the paper and a member of parliament’s influential Treasury Select Committee, told City PM that the current progress in dealing with the UK’s housing shortage remains "painfully slow".
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"The housing shortage has lead to a massive surge in house prices…Right now we have a serious problem, which is the lack of availability of land. The housing market is broken – I hope the government is listening to this. My party needs to confront the issue," said Clarke, who has also previously worked as a policy advisor to Brexit secretary Dominic Raab.
He added that the "deep seated homes crisis across London and the south east" has meant that property ownership is becoming a "vanishing dream" for many people.
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Chief secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss told City PM: "It’s good that we’re talking about this issue. By making sure that there is enough housing, which the government is committed to, we can help improve productivity and the economy as a whole."
However, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government responded: "While we remain intent on building the homes our country needs, the housing secretary has been clear that this does not mean building all over our green belt."
“After a full public consultation and consideration of representations received the housing secretary published the revised national planning rule book – the National Planning Policy Framework – in July. This clarifies and strengthens the protections provided to the Green Belt. We have no plans to alter these rules.”
In the 2016/17 financial year, 217,350 new homes were completed, marking the first time the government's self-imposed threshold has been met since before the financial crisis.
Prime Minister Theresa May's administration has pledged to up the ante over the next five years, promising to build 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s amid worries that much of the UK still lacks the necessary supply of housing.
The new call to action, which would still leave 98 per cent of all existing green belt land untouched, comes a day after KPMG unveiled a new report which forecasted house price growth in 2019 would drop to its slowest rate since the financial crisis, as buyer activity falls amid a growing lack of affordability.
Moore said that the housing shortage was a challenge for the Conservative party as a result of so many Tory MPs having green belt constituencies.