Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to page 70 of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s publication entitled Economic and Fiscal Outlook of March 2025, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential implications for its policies of the statement that much of the additional development in the next five years is assumed to take place on current green belt land.

The government is committed to preserving Green Belts which have served England's towns and cities well over many decades, not least in terms of checking the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas and preventing neighbouring towns merging into one another.

However, we know that there are simply not enough sites on brownfield land registers to deliver the volume of homes that the country needs each year, let alone enough that are viable and in the right location.

The government’s new approach to the Green Belt, including prioritising the release of lower quality grey belt land and introducing ‘golden rules’ to ensure development benefits communities and nature, is set out in the revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) published on 12 December.

On 27 February, Planning Practice Guidance was published to assist local authorities and other decision-makers, and to support a consistent approach to determining whether land is grey belt. It can be found on gov.uk here. This new guidance will support authorities in producing Local Plans, while also making sure that planning applications and development on suitable grey belt land can proceed in the short-term in areas without an up-to-date plan.

The government has also provided 133 local planning authorities with £70,000 of pump priming funding each to contribute towards the costs of carrying out Green Belt reviews in their areas.