Plans by the Labour Party to allow building on green belt land could result in more than 150,000 new homes, analysis has suggested.
Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to give local authorities more power to build on green belt land to meet local housing needs if his party wins at the next general election.
Last week, he said he would change planning rules to give local areas the ability to build on car parks or ‘similar land’ in the green belt which ‘doesn’t affect the beauty of our countryside’.
According to analysis by estate agents Knight Frank car parks take up 2,452 hectares of the green belt and could be redeveloped to accommodate up to 147,180 homes.
It says if all brownfield sites on the green belt were taken into account, the number of new homes would be even greater.
Oliver Frank, head of residential development research at Knight Frank, called for parts of the green belt to be reclassified to allow for more homes to be built.
He said: ‘Everybody has a perception that the green belt is completely green and sacrosanct to build on, but there’s lengths of concrete areas and the like that you could actually repurpose.’
Steve Turner, executive director of the Home Builders Federation, said he would welcome a ‘sensible debate’ about the benefits of building homes on parts of the green belt.
He said: ‘The green belt is a planning designation that does not necessarily reflect the ecological value of the land and swathes of it consist of derelict sites.’
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