Build new houses on the grey belt if you must Labour… but stay off the green belt
NEW Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has promised to “tread more lightly” on our lives.
But “on England’s [and the rest of the UK’s] green and pleasant land?” maybe not so much, if Rachel Reeves’s first speech as Chancellor is anything to go by.
For she has vowed to reform the nation’s “timid” planning system with, among other things, orders for local councils to favour, rather than fight, building projects on green belt land deemed to be “grey belt” because it is regarded as lower quality.
Bring me my mixer of cement!
Bring me my slabs of brick!
Bring me my trowel! O walls, unfold!
Bring me my hordes of first-time buyers!
Which, if you’re trying to get your foot on the property ladder, all sounds great.
But a few words of caution, starting with the reality that unless the Government subsidises developers to keep costs down, many new builds in a half decent area will still be unaffordable for young people.
Secondly, if Labour is as serious about environmental issues as it says it is, then how will building on fields or wasteland “with little intrinsic beauty” sit with that?
A “film trailer” released five years ago by The Wildlife Trusts used Wind In The Willows characters to warn of the environmental damage caused by building projects — showing Mole’s habitat being concreted and Mr Toad motorcycling over mounds of rubbish.
Yet here is an initiative that, if it comes to fruition, will force nature out of the area.
And what’s the betting that the architect’s drawings for these proposed developments will show AI-generated young couples happily strolling to the local shops, GP surgery, NHS dentist and major supermarket stocked with everything they need?
That will be the promise, but as many who bought in to existing new developments will tell you, the reality can be starkly different.
Often, developers struggle to sell the first phase, so the planned second phase gets put on hold and the proposed shops etc fail to materialise — leaving residents having to drive to the nearest town, where the existing infrastructure can’t cope with the extra traffic of both cars and people.
And then there’s the impact migration has had on the housing crisis.
According to a Commons Library briefing paper published in May: “The number of people migrating to the UK has been greater than the number emigrating in each year since 1994.
“Before then, immigration and emigration were roughly in balance, with net migration slightly decreasing the population in most years.
“Over the last 25 years, both immigration and emigration have increased to historically high levels, with immigration exceeding emigration by more than 100,000 in every year between 1998 and 2020.”
And in 2023, the Officefor National Statistics estimated that 1.2million people migrated into the UK and 532,000 people emigrated from it, leaving a net migration figure of 685,000 in one year alone.
That’s a hell of a lot of extra people needing somewhere to live.
Who was in power 25 years ago and advocated the start of mass migration?
Labour under Tony Blair. And the Tories had 14 years to bring it under control and failed to do so.
So here we are, talking about building on the “grey belt” to provide 1.5million extra homes.
Surely, as Labour itself acknowledges, there are other options?
What about the estimated 250,000 empty residential properties which could be financially incentivised to provide housing?
Or how about demolishing empty office blocks of no architectural value for new developments, or building on brownfield sites?
Mind you, plenty have promised planning reform in the past and found themselves thwarted by historic protections, contaminated land rules, wildlife laws, local dissent and money running out.
So watch this green space.
It might never happen.
Not a bump in the road for canny Margot
MOVIE actress Margot Robbie is reportedly pregnant.
Hard to tell, to be honest, because her alleged “bump” is still smaller than mine despite kicking my heavy bread habit a month ago.
But if congratulations are in order for the Barbie star and her husband Tom Ackerley, is she about to enter the famed period of “District Attorney” roles that, history tells us, befall every “sex symbol” once she becomes a mum?
Before then effortlessly segueing in to the Driving Miss Daisy years?
Except that Ms Robbie is a smart cookie and, perhaps anticipating this development, is also a highly successful film producer.
So she can not only earn millions behind the camera but also have her pick of the plum roles if she so wishes.
Now that’s girl power.
Jack has to grow up
CHILDHOOD sweethearts Jack Grealish and Sasha Attwood have also announced they’re having their first baby together.
The 28-year-old Man City star called it “life’s biggest blessing”.
Sasha, who he met at school, has stuck by him through his “partying” years and shown great faith not only in their relationship but in his ability to now settle down and be a stable role model to his child.
Let’s hope he accepts the challenge and now curtails some of the excesses that have landed him in trouble in the past.
If encouragement is needed, he only needs glance in the direction of team-mate Kyle Walker, whose car-crash personal life has led to loyal wife Annie, mother of four of his children, having to tolerate the high-profile presence of his former mistress Lauryn Goodman and their two children.
Jack the lad – you have been warned. Time to be Jack the man.
Harry worth award
PRINCE Harry is due to be honoured with the Pat Tillman Award for Service in LA tomorrow.
Tillman, an American football star who joined the US Army after 9/11, was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004, when he was just 27.
But his mother Mary, who wasn’t consulted over the recipient of this year’s award in her son’s name, says: “I am shocked as to why they would select such a controversial and divisive individual to receive the award.
“There are recipients that are far more fitting.
“There are individuals working in the veteran community that are doing tremendous things to assist veterans.
“These individuals do not have the money, resources, connections or privilege that Prince Harry has.
“I feel that those types of individuals should be recognised.”
She’s right, they should.
But on this occasion, so should Harry, who is reportedly “stunned” by the backlash.
For he’s being awarded for his part in founding and promoting the Invictus Games, which, for the past ten years has harnessed the power of sport to give a physical and psychological boost to injured veterans.
As a patron of Help for Heroes, I’ve seen first hand how many it helped to direct focus on a sporting goal rather than their injuries, and the effectiveness of it cannot be underestim- ated.
And it’s Harry’s “money, resources, connections” and “privilege” that have helped turn it in to a global success.
Big tax bill is potty
REMEMBER Citizen Smith and the Tooting Popular Front?
For anyone under 60, it was a BBC sitcom by Only Fools writer John Sullivan about young Marxist “Wolfie” Smith – played by Robert Lindsay – who thought he was South London’s answer to Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.
Well anyway, it now seems that he’s running France.
Despite political commentators predicting a shift to the far-right in the second round of the elections, the New Popular Front has scraped a victory.
A coalition of socialists, communists and greens, it has come straight out of the traps with a promise to impose a 90 per cent tax on anyone with an annual income of over 400,000 euros to help fund its 150billion euro spending plans.
Oh dear. Student politics at its best.
With the best will in the world, who is going to carry on working in a country that allows them to keep just ten per cent of their earnings?
Quite simply, they won’t. And when they leave, they will take their companies, jobs and charitable donations with them.
C’est stupide.