The Great Green Field Takeaway

8 January 2007

Figures released by the West Midlands Regional Assembly today [1] confirm the dramatic implications of the Government’s pressure for much higher house building in the West Midlands.

Of the three options put forward by the Assembly, the Government favours the highest one, which would see 575,000 new dwellings built in the West Midlands over 25 years – more than half as many again as in current plans. [2]

The great majority of the extra dwellings would be on greenfield sites, and almost 23 square miles of greenfield land could be lost. [3]

In August 2006, countryside campaigners the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) [4] warned that the Government was putting pressure on the Regional Assembly to accept a huge increase in house building, even though it threatened to sabotage urban regeneration, encourage more people to move out of urban areas, consume Green Belt land and destroy open countryside. [5]

If the Regional Assembly accepts the Government’s figures the impact would vary across the West Midlands. CPRE is today publishing a ‘Housing Hot Spots’ map based on the Assembly’s figures which shows clearly the towns and areas most likely to be affected.

CPRE warns that building at this level would damage the West Midlands in many ways:

• further rapid and unsustainable expansion of towns such as Lichfield, Rugby, Warwick / Leamington and Worcester, risking historic character and high environmental quality;
• expansion of villages within commuting distance of Birmingham, the Black Country and Coventry;
• more people tempted to move out of the conurbations – at the moment over 12,000 per year (net) do so;
• a more dispersed population, leading to increased travel, congestion and higher carbon emissions;
• a reduction in the proportion of housing built on previously developed sites from 80% now to nearer 60%;
• the loss of about 14,600 acres – almost 23 square miles – of open land;
• last and not least, the loss of significant areas of Green Belt, weakening the strong contribution it currently makes to keeping urban sprawl in check and boosting urban regeneration.

Gerald Kells, Regional Policy Officer for CPRE West Midlands, said:

‘This is not the way to provide homes in the West Midlands for those who really need them. It’s a recipe for indiscriminate greenfield development, social polarisation and countryside destruction. We urge all who care about the future of their areas to join us in opposing these cavalier and, ill thought out proposals.’ [6]

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. The West Midlands Regional Spatial Strategy Options Report is being published on 8 January 2007. It is available on the Regional Assembly’s web site – www.wmra.gov.uk.

2. The West Midlands Regional Spatial Strategy, approved by the Government in June 2004, proposes that 307,700 dwellings should be provided in the West Midlands between 2001 and 2021. The new figures represent a 50% increase in the annual rate of provision over a slightly longer period.

3. These figures are based on a comparison between the number of dwellings to be provided in each part of the region and the amount of previously developed (brownfield) land said to be available in the West Midlands Regional Assembly’s 2004 Urban Capacity Study. Projected densities from the same study have been used to calculate greenfield land requirements for dwellings surplus to brownfield capacity.

4. 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.

5. Greenfield Housing Bonanza Could Wreck the West Midlands – CPRE news release 41/06, 1 August 2006.

6. Comments on the proposals should be sent to the West Midlands Regional Assembly, Regional Partnership Centre, Albert House, Quay Place, Birmingham B1 2RA (or by email to wmrss@wmra.gov.uk) by 5 March 2007.

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