The Government's greenfield housing policy is achieving one goal - annoying the CPRE

A primary goal of government's recent housing policy has been to annoy, enrage even, the Nimbys and Bananas at the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England. To insist that we shall reject the views of the not in my back yard and build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone crowd.

It appears to be working:

Having analysed new Government data, the Campaign to Protect Rural England has learned that 3,332ha of the green belt were lost to housing in 2017, up from 2,105ha in 2013 and 3,328 in 2015/16.

That's not an error, that's the point:

Rebecca Pullinger, Planning Campaigner at the Campaign to Protect Rural England said: “Whilst the increase in the proportion of development taking place on brownfield land is promising, the lack of reduction in greenfield development is alarming news for those who love the countryside. Developers are still able to force through land hungry, greenfield development even when brownfield options exist, often only benefitting their own profits.

CPRE has identified is a need for a national policy that empowers councils to refuse applications for housing on greenfield land where suitable brownfield options exist.

That is also not an error, that's the point. To, however marginally, free ourselves from the restrictions of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors and build houses people want to live in where they'd like to live. Instead of where the Nimbys and Bananas think they should be allowed to squat in squalor.

Under previous rules, at least 30 new homes had to be built per hectare (the equivalent to two and a half acres), but new regulations mean developers can get away with erecting just 26 homes per hectare.

Good, someone has noticed that modern British housing is, by far, the smallest in Europe and it would be a good idea to allow rather more than just 300 square metres for a new house and garden. We should relax said rules further. To, like, having no insistence upon density at all.

The complaint is that 8,240 acres a year are being concreted over. This in a country of 60 million such acres. We could thus do this for a millennium and end up with some 10-14% of the entire country nothing but housing and buildings and factories and civilisation. Actually, just about what we have been doing since William the Bastard stole the entire place. For Britain is today about 10 to 14% civilisation, the rest of it being land we can extend it to. We should do more of that given the number of people here who all would like to have room to swing a cat.