Arguments over whether land designated for Marlow Film Studios should be redesignated as ‘greybelt’ were central to the recent planning inquiry over the proposals.
Campaign groups are making renewed calls to push back against ‘an existential threat’ to the greenbelt in the Royal Borough – caused by Government policy changes.
The Royal Borough has approximately 16,400 hectares of greenbelt land according to the most recent official measure, out of 19,855 hectares in total – making it about 82 per cent greenbelt.
London Green Belt Council (LGBC) is an umbrella organisation for groups ‘passionate’ about preserving the Metropolitan greenbelt, which comprises parts of Berkshire.
Some of LGBC’s member groups include: Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Maidenhead Great Park campaign group, Old Windsor Parish Council, Holyport Residents Association and Society for the Protection of Ascot and Environs (SPAE).
LGBC has been petitioning for an ‘urgent change’ to the Government’s greybelt concept.
Greybelt – a new classification which came in with the Labour government – refers to previously developed or ‘low-quality’ greenbelt land, therefore considered suitable for building on.
However, LGBC is against this classification. In its petition, they wrote: “Greybelt’ was initially described as poor-quality greenbelt land like disused car parks.
“We believe the new definition… is so broad it could include almost any greenbelt land… and the greybelt glossary definition could result in the loss of our countryside forever.”
Key to these concerns are the ‘five purposes of the greenbelt’ as defined by the Government:
But changes made to national planning policy in December have seen these five purposes altered in a way that could negatively affect RBWM.
The wording has shifted from preventing ‘neighbouring towns and villages’ from merging, to just ‘neighbouring towns.’
Given the significant number of village–village and town–village boundaries in RBWM, this could be a problem, CPRE believes.
Speaking to the Advertiser, CPRE Berkshire highlighted this change as ‘one of the biggest problems’ and leaves a number of locations ‘immediately at risk’.
The LGBC petition, which runs until November 14, has nearly 20,000 signatures – but will need 100,000 to be considered for debate in Parliament.
On September 1, the Government responded to say it has ‘no plans to change the definition of greybelt’.
It highlighted that it has widened what counts as brownfield land and that the rules now put more pressure on councils to approve planning applications on those sites.
The Government has also instructed councils to plan for higher-density housing in these urban areas – ie, more homes packed onto the same amount of land.
“However, there are simply not enough sites on brownfield land registers to deliver the volume of homes that the country needs,” the response reads.”
The revised framework replaces a ‘previous haphazard approach’, they added.
“[It] clarifies that greybelt land must not strongly contribute to greenbelt purposes,” they wrote.
“Where it is necessary to release greenbelt land for development, local plans should prioritise previously developed land before looking to other grey belt land.
“Our changes do not weaken existing protections for the natural environment.”
See the petition at petition.parliament.uk/petitions/725558
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