Rishi Sunak’s got a new policy out this morning which may be met with approval with by greying Tory members, yet will go down like a cup of sick with their grandchildren – a new law to ban any building on the green belt. Given the lack of this anyway, co-conspirators may ask why Sunak wants to spend a whole day talking about it. Well, his team have a damning statistic in their press release. Hold on to your hats…
“Analysis by the House of Commons Library shows that the Green Belt has shrunk by around 1% since 2006, largely driven by local authorities adopting new plans that alter the size of their Green Belt. We need to close this loophole.”
You read that correctly: 1% in 16 years. As you can see, at this rate the Green Belt will disappear entirely by 3,622.
What Team Rishi neglect to mention in their press release is that, according to that same House of Commons Library analysis, the Green Belt area under protection has increased by 123% in the last half-century:
Dashing the hopes of young people in cities to own their own family homes anytime soon is not an acute problem for someone with a £7 million mews house, a flat on the Old Brompton Road that’s reportedly kept empty for when his billionaire family fly over – presumably they just can’t afford London hotel prices – along with multiple other homes.
Recently the owner of a grade II listed 1826 Georgian mansion up north managed to get permission to build an L-shaped single-story swimming pool building, gym and tennis court within the beautiful North Yorkshire green countryside. Despite councillors being told the pool building, located some 81 metres from the main house, would “differ markedly from traditional agricultural buildings in that it would feature numerous large windows”, it was allowed. Rishi, protector of our beautiful natural landscape, will no doubt wish to crack down on such green belt developments the moment he gets into office…
