Green Field Housing Bonanza Could Wreck The West Midlands

2 August 2006

The Government is putting pressure on the West Midlands for a green field housing bonanza. It could make the controversy over housebuilding as intense and heated as it is in South East England, with the West Midlands becoming a new battleground for Government proposals to push through more housing development at all costs.

Countryside campaigners CPRE [1] are warning that a huge increase in housebuilding in the countryside around Birmingham threatens to sabotage urban regeneration, encourage more people to move out of urban areas, consume Green Belt land and destroy open green landscapes. [2]

The latest Government predictions of housing requirements [3] could see 50% more land than currently planned being allocated for house building across the West Midlands over the next 25 years, with the figures more than doubling in some areas.

That would be incompatible with the region’s present emphasis on brownfield development and urban regeneration. The West Midlands Regional Assembly has been consulting West Midlands councils about the implications. [4]

Some councils – for example Shropshire and Herefordshire – have told the Regional Assembly that they could not meet the higher figures without great damage to the countryside and market towns.

And some urban authorities are warning that they have limited building land, and that developers would abandon house building on derelict or under-used sites that need remediation if they were given cheap green field alternatives.

But some other councils in the region want to go along with the Government. Worcestershire County Council is contemplating expansions of Worcester and Redditch into the countryside and Coventry and Warwickshire seem willing to sacrifice large areas of Green Belt to let cities and towns expand outwards.

Towns such as Burton-on-Trent, Hereford, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Telford and Worcester – all already targeted for development – would also be in the firing line. Some might even double in size over twenty years. Others such as Lichfield and Warwick / Leamington which have been growing fast in recent years would have to keep on growing to fulfil the higher numbers, risking serious damage to their environmental quality.

CPRE says the Government’s new household projections are of limited relevance to the West Midlands because they assume a continuation of past trends and policies, whereas the current West Midlands planning strategy aims to take the region in a new and more sustainable direction. The Government’s fundamental premise, that building more houses will reduce prices, is misguided. [5]

CPRE are not convinced that the housebuilding industry would build at the much higher rate [6] and believe developers could end up cherry picking the most profitable greenfield sites. The exodus of people from the city to the countryside would then accelerate, keeping prices unaffordable in rural areas and undermining efforts to make areas like East Birmingham, the Black Country and North Staffordshire more desirable places in which to live. [7]

This could lead to worsening quality of life, loss of countryside, increased traffic congestion, longer journeys to work and more pressure on natural resources. Overall, the extra houses and other development associated with them could consume up to 40 square miles of land over the next 25 years, most of it greenfield. [8]

Peter Langley, Vice Chairman of West Midlands CPRE, said: ‘The West Midlands needs more affordable homes [9], but swamping the market with greenfield land and playing fast and loose with the region’s long-established Green Belts won’t achieve that: it’s a form of environmental vandalism.

‘The Regional Assembly must stick to its guns and resist Government pressure to open the floodgates to new housing. It should continue to work with local authorities to control the supply of new housing so this is kept within environmental limits, and to continue the focus on urban regeneration.

‘The present strategy must be given time to work. It would be a terrible mistake to water it down.’

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. CPRE, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, is a charity which promotes the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England. We advocate positive solutions for the long-term future of the countryside. Founded in 1926, we have 60,000 supporters and a branch in every county. President: Sir Max Hastings. Patron: Her Majesty The Queen.

2. The current Regional Spatial Strategy for the West Midlands was issued by the Government in June 2004 following advice from the Regional Assembly. It puts strong emphasis on the renaissance of the region’s major urban areas and on rural renaissance. This includes a progressive reduction in overall housebuilding rates over the next 15 years with a shift of emphasis towards building new houses in the major urban areas such as Birmingham, the Black Country, Coventry and Stoke-on-Trent.

3. The Government’s 2003-based household projections were published in March this year. They estimate future numbers of households nationally and in particular parts of the country, based on past demographic trends continuing. They take no account of the effect of future policy. However the Government have insisted in meetings and at conferences that the Regional Assembly should seriously consider raising the planned housing figures to the level implied by the projections.

4. The West Midlands Regional Assembly is in the process of reviewing the Regional Spatial Strategy. In February this year it consulted all strategic planning authorities in the region – county councils, metropolitan district councils and unitary authorities – on a range of issues arising from the review. The advice from the authorities was submitted in May and is available on the Regional Assembly’s web site, www.wmra.gov.uk. The housebuilding figures suggested by the Assembly ranged from a continuation of present rates (about 15,000 per year for the region as a whole) up to some 23,000 per year.

5. CPRE and others have argued that only huge, environmentally devastating increases in building of homes for sale – beyond levels being contemplated by Government – could make any significant impact on house prices. This is because the housing market is dominated by sales of existing homes, with the flow of new homes into the marketplace making next to no impact. Demand-side factors such as interest rates, income levels, the performance of alternative investments to property and household formation rates have a much bigger impact on house prices than the supply of new homes.

6. For example, the independent panel which examined the East of England Regional Spatial Strategy earlier this year concluded that the industry was not capable of building at the highest rates proposed in that region.

7. These areas are already the subject of focused regeneration through the Government’s Housing Pathfinders programme and other means. This is an essential element of the overall planning strategy for the region.

8. At the higher building rate, an extra 194,000 dwellings would be required over 25 years. At densities of 20 dwellings per hectare (allowing for roads, shops, schools etc as well as houses), they would require 9,700 hectares of land, or some 37.5 square miles. Because the supply of previously developed ‘brownfield’ land is limited, and much of it is already earmarked for development, CPRE fears the great majority of extra housing development would take place on green fields. Thus if there is a major increase in levels of housebuilding in the West Midlands, it would be impossible to achieve the present Regional Spatial Strategy’s target of 76% of future housing on previously developed land, or anything like it.

9. CPRE believes, along with several leading housing organisations, that the overwhelming housing need is for an increase in the building of subsidised, affordable homes for people on lower incomes who suffer the worst housing problems – both for rent and for affordable home ownership. We participated in the work of the Government’s Affordable Rural Housing Commission and in July we published a joint charter with the National Housing Federation calling for more affordable homes in rural areas.

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