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Grey Belt Land: Definition and Application

It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for bringing to the House an important debate on an issue that affects a lot of our constituencies. I also thank all the Members who contributed today, including my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster)—indeed, I thank him for contributing in this Chamber for the second time today.

The Liberal Democrats want to see more homes built, principally the 150,000 council and social rent homes that the country needs, but the right way to deliver those homes is by working with communities and trusting them, and prioritising brownfield sites, the 700,000 empty homes in the country, and the 500,000 homes that could be provided in empty commercial buildings, according to the London School of Economics.

When it comes to the green belt, few of us, and certainly not the Liberal Democrats, would object to a community deciding, through its democratic local plan, to release formerly green-belt land for its own reasons, and particularly for social homes. But the Government’s grey-belt policy is not that. It is being abused, giving carte blanche to development pretty much anywhere and, as it is currently set out in the national planning policy framework, it has to go. We were told that “grey belt” meant disused car parks and old petrol stations, but the CPRE has found that, in the first year, 88% of homes approved on the grey belt at appeal were on land that had never been built on, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam also pointed out.

In this Chamber in July, the Minister told us:

“The definition of grey belt is set out in the glossary of the NPPF.”

—[Official Report, 16 July 2026; Vol. 789, c. 466WH.]

There is a definition there, but for me it has more holes than a Swiss cheese. It omits to protect two of the green belt’s five purposes—safeguarding the countryside from encroachment and recycling derelict land. Because the purposes that are left do not apply to villages, it has also removed villages from the green-belt protections that they have had for more than a century, so a field on the edge of a green-belt village is very likely to be grey belt. Developers know it and are trying their luck.

On 7 September, the Secretary of State told the House that she is

“strengthening and clarifying the rules around the release of grey belt”.

—[Official Report, 7 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 643.]

If there is no confusion, what is being clarified? The answer so far has been to take the test for protected landscapes out of the definition altogether. That widens the grey belt rather than tightening it. On the same day, the Minister confirmed that the Government do not collect data on how much land councils have identified as grey belt. Will the Minister commit to collecting that? My hon. Friend the Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) asked for that last October.

The new national planning policy framework requires every green-belt council to plan for grey-belt releases, allocated in its local plan. But since the Government’s grey-belt rules allow any developer to apply for grey-belt development on any site, whether or not it has been allocated as grey belt in the local plan, there can be little point in pretending that the local plan approach is the only one, or that grey-belt development is, in any sense, being plan led.

Developers do not need a grey-belt policy to redevelop an old petrol station in any event. Redeveloping previously developed land in the green belt has been allowed since 2012, if not longer, as long as it does not harm openness more than the development previously there. What grey belt adds is the field next to it, and it is decided at appeal, rather than through the local plan—that is, rather than by the local community. That is another instance where community powers have been stripped away in what the Town and Country Planning Association has called an “unprecedently permissive” planning regime.

This policy comes into play where there is unmet need—in practice, where a council cannot show a five-year land supply. In Somerset, the Government are mandating that another 75,000 homes—a 41% increase—should be found in the next local plan. I have not met anyone who believes that is realistic or achievable. The targets are derived from the Government’s new standard method, which has in one fell swoop thrown much of England under the threat of development, as the majority of councils cannot meet such impossible targets under the new standard method. It would take them the two-year local plan process to escape that threat, and millions of pounds to boot. This could be called a developer’s charter but, unfortunately, many of these sites are not being developed, so it is more of a land speculator’s charter.

Developers, not the community, end up selecting which part of the green belt is up for grabs. Villages are hit hardest, not just because they have lost their green-belt protection but because for many, if not all, the new targets have undermined the one thing that has reliably delivered affordable homes for local people in rural areas: rural exception sites. Last week, I brought to the House an example from an inspector’s decision in Gweek, Cornwall.

The Minister told us in July that the framework makes exception sites easier. In reality, exception sites work where agricultural land that is worth, say, £12,000 an acre cannot be sold for a higher price for commercial housing due to strict planning rules, so it might as well be allowed to be sold for agricultural value, or a little more, for social housing that helps the village. The Government, however, have now told every landowner around villages and elsewhere that their acre could be worth not just £12,000 but anything from £150,000 to £3 million—the price of land with residential permission—because those strict planning policy preventions no longer apply, and because anyone can apply for it to be developed as grey belt anywhere in the green belt.

If a landowner is told that their field might be grey belt, why would they sell it for £12,000 for social housing, when they could get £150,000 or more? It would definitely be more in the home counties and near London. Hope value has always been the enemy of exception sites, and the way that the grey belt has been implemented has created hope value around every village and green belt—so goodbye to social housing on such exception sites. Building the kind of homes that villages lack just got harder.

We do agree on the golden rules, which rightly require more affordable and social housing where green-belt land is released. That is absolutely right, but it does not mean that valuable green spaces should be up for grabs. Ironically, an area with no green belt can be better protected from some of these policies, but that does not mean that our green spaces in Taunton and Wellington are safe.

In Taunton, we have green wedges—countryside running right into the town and doing the job that the green belt does elsewhere—but those spaces have only local policy protection. Earlier this year, consultants recommended releasing Trull green wedge from its green wedge status, ironically because it was the last bit of green remaining in a built-up area. That is something that, in my opinion, made it more valuable not less. An application for 125 homes quickly followed, because the council, like most in England, cannot meet its new five-year land supply. Our councillors rightly refused the application. Fortunately, it was under the 150 homes limit, above which councillors must now ask Whitehall’s permission to refuse a development.

The appeals public inquiry has just begun showing how thin green wedge protection is. The green belt, green wedges and local green spaces can all be weakened by the next rewriting of the framework, without this House having a vote. In the Liberal Democrats’ view, all communities—not just those in the green belt—should have a stronger and longer-lasting way to protect their most precious green spaces.

What should we do instead? First, we should scrap the grey belt and instead release green-belt land through community-led local plans, with the golden rules applying in full and with social homes at their heart. Secondly, we should keep the long-standing exception for previously developed land, and make brownfield-first a legal requirement. Thirdly, we should give communities who review their green belt 20 years’ statutory protection for the green wedges and green belt that they prioritise. That would give them confidence that, instead of a free-for-all, their most precious green spaces will be protected in law for the long term.

If people are to accept the homes that we need—and we do need them—they must have confidence in the protection for the bits of green space that are most precious to them and most dear to those communities, as our amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 set out. We were promised that the grey belt would turn old petrol stations into homes, but what it is actually delivering is the loss of green field after green field, as decided by the Government’s policy issued in Whitehall. It is time to scrap it and put communities back in charge of their green belt and their green spaces.

3.11 pm