Response to Persimmon Interview on Radio 4 today about need to look at redefining Green Belt.

1. Certain cities and many towns are under acute housing pressure. Thus we need clearer understanding of what brown field sites are viable and also what neighbouring authorities can do to help with meeting objectively assessed housing market assessments. It is worth mentioning that such assessments are estimates and seem to have rather large margins of error which are rarely reported.

2. At present the duty to cooperate is not working as effectively as it should. This is the unfortunate legacy of throwing out the regional baby with the New Labour planning bathwater. This means that there is an ad-hoc approach to issue of housing growth and demand as each authority tries to get its local plan approved and once done is reluctant to take on extra growth. For example in West Midlands the Black Country has had plans approved so no obligation to take on Birmingham’s overspill

3. The one sided economic approach to viability means that sites are judged on the profits to be made rather than any wider issues on social or environmental viability or indeed impacts on family! This has the impact of reducing more expensive sites of develop in brownfield putting more pressure on greenfield sites.

4. I believe passionately that we should rethink green belt but not abandon the concept for developer-led profits. Rather we should seek to maximise the environmental and social benefits of such land in new approaches that could be wedges, belts or even bananas. Rarely is green belt positively managed. In so doing it needs to be developed as the local plan proceeds rather than as a no go area.

5. We urgently need to move away from the current fix on housing, green belt or transport in separate silos. The big failure of planning in my view has been its focus on single issues in isolation rather than trying to join them up. So instead of building houses can we build high quality communities and places. That is what planning is all about.