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Press Release: New paper reveals where London's Green Belt must be built on to curtail housing crisis
For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Head of Communications Kate Andrews: kate@adamsmith.org | 07584 778207.
- London and surrounding counties need at least one million new homes in the next ten years to meet housing demand, and to stop rents and house prices from soaring higher.
- Many of these new homes will have to come on greenfield or Green Belt sites because not enough suitable brownfield land exists; we estimate that this will require roughly 20,000 hectares of green belt space.
- Almost the full amount of space (20,000ha) can be found within a 10 minute walk – 800m – of existing commuter train stations.
- This paper explores some of the best areas to build on low quality Green Belt around London. Locations include: East of Theydon Bois station, around Redbridge, Pinner Park Farm in Harrow, and some of the hundreds of Green Belt golf courses.
London must build on low quality Green Belt spaces around existing commuter infrastructure to solve its housing crisis, according to a new paper from the Adam Smith Institute which identifies many of those areas.
Building on 20,000 acres of the Metropolitan Green Belt (roughly 3.7%) would create room for the 1m new homes needed, estimating 50 houses per acre; nearly all of which could be built within 10 minutes walk of a station.
The paper, A Garden of One’s Own: Suggestions for development in the Metropolitan Green Belt, identifies specific areas where tens of thousands of dwellings can be built, and points out how providing the housing Londoners need does not require ‘concreting over’ the countryside, destroying amenity, or overcrowding.
The author of the paper, Tom Papworth, considers the five main justifications given for the green belt: to check sprawl; to prevent towns merging; to safeguard the countryside; to preserve historic towns; and to force land recycling; and notes that many pieces of land currently designated that way do not meet any of these.
For example, there is an area of land between Hainault, Barkingside, Chadwell Heath and Colliers Row, totalling about 1,200 ha—or 60,000 dwellings at standard densities outside of London—where none of these purposes apply. It is already swallowed by Redbridge, it would have no impact on merging with London, there are no historic towns, and land recycling is irrelevant.
The table below lays out the total land available of different types that could be used to fill the 20,000 hectare demand, assuming standard densities. At inner London densities of 120 dwellings/ha it would take much less land, and at lower densities of 30-40/ha it would take more.
The author of the report, Tom Papworth, said:
London and the surrounding counties need 1 million new homes over the next 10 years, but there is only enough ‘brownfield’ land for a third of that. ‘Greenfield’ development is no longer a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’.
Green Belts are unsustainable. Green Belt policy pushes up the cost of living, reduces people’s quality of life and actually harms the environment. Yet it has become an article of faith among politicians and is staunchly defended by the (generally wealthier) citizens who live near the Green Belt, and those who value the notion but ignore the harm it does to others.
We have to choose whether to protect valuable inner-city green space or sacrifice our parks for the sake of low-grade farmland, golf courses and already-developed sites that happen to have once been classified as Green Belt. With London’s mayoral election due in a few months, it is time to put housing at the top of the political agenda.
Executive Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Sam Bowman, added:
London’s Green Belt is a corrupt subsidy to the middle class that hurts ordinary Londoners. It doesn’t provide amenity to most Londoners, who rarely even see it, and it drives up land prices which makes houses and inner-city green spaces unaffordable for everybody but the rich. To solve the housing crisis, we need to build more homes. To build more homes, we need to free up some of London’s green belt. It’s as simple as that.
This doesn’t have to mean less green space. More green belt land available for development means cheaper land, cheaper gardens, and bigger public parks and sports fields. Those are green spaces that Londoners actually use. Right now London is being strangled by the Green Belt, and freeing up more of that land for development of houses, gardens and parks would give all of us more room to breathe.
Notes to Editors:
For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Kate Andrews, Head of Communications, at kate@adamsmith.org | 07584 778207.
To read A Garden of One’s Own: Suggestions for development in the Metropolitan Green Belt, click here.
In January 2015, the Adam Smith Institute released The Green Noose: An analysis of Green Belts and proposals for reform, which looks at the Green Belt’s impact on England’s housing shortage. After a comprehensive review of the causes of the housing crisis, it concludes that the planning structure is out of date and in need of radical reform.
The Adam Smith Institute is a free market, libertarian think tank based in London. It advocates classically liberal public policies to create a richer, freer world.
Sam Bowman criticises the Chief Medical Officer's new alcohol guidelines on ITV
Executive Director Sam Bowman criticised the Chief Medical Officer's new alcohol guidelines on ITV's Good Morning Britain:
Meet Ted Cruz: The dark horse who could pip Trump | Kate Andrews' election column in City AM
Kate Andrew's latest City AM column on the US elections, 2016:
Senator Ted Cruz is the most interesting candidate in the US presidential race right now. As a darling of the Tea Party, in 2012, he swept into the Senate, representing Texas, having campaigned on deeply conservative principles and policies. At the time, many dismissed him as a rabble-rouser who would wind up as a less successful version of George W Bush. Now, not only is he leading in the polls in Iowa, but he has also beat out senator Marco Rubio as the dark horse of the race thus far.Cruz has been criticised for having some of the most conservative views in the contest. Though his conservatism is rooted in a strict interpretation of the US constitution – not the modern populism that has propelled candidates like former senator Rick Santorum and former governor Mike Huckabee to call for heavy defence spending and further government interference – his extreme views on abortion and the death penalty have many questioning if he can appeal to moderate Republicans, let alone independents.
Forget Barack Obama's tears, his gun clampdown is pure politics | Kate Andrews writes for the Telegraph
President Obama has not met a speech he didn’t like; or, let’s be more generous, speeches tend to treat him well. The President has always had a knack for presentation, and his comparative advantage has been to come across likable and relatable in front of crowds, when it’s on his terms, and his topic of choice.
Yesterday, the President was in his element, and the world seemed to pause for his emotional 45-minute speech, detailing his new gun control provisions, which will be carried out through executive order. And his emotional bluntness seems to have come out as the top line of the news story – the clip of the President shedding tears for the victims of gun violence has gone viral.
The President once claimed he wakes up and learns about domestic and foreign happenings on TV news channels like everyone else. At the time, this seemed like the weakest excuse one could come up with for failing to address a scandal that led to hundreds of deaths in veteran’s hospitals. But after watching the President’s address yesterday, I’ve started to believe this is really the case.
Banning Trump from UK endores illberal immigration system|Kate Andrews for The Times Red Box
Head of Communications at the ASI, Kate Andrews, wrote for The Times Red Box on why calling for Trump to be banned from the UK is just as bad as him calling for muslims to be banned from America.
Who could have guessed that after Trump called for an illiberal immigration system that keeps people out of a country based on their beliefs, over half a million people in the UK would sign a petition to show their support for such a policy.Those who signed the Ban Trump campaign must think his exile would be a punishment to fit his crime. Unlike Trump’s view on Muslim immigrants, their views on Trump are undoubtedly correct, which makes revoking his freedom of movement morally permissible from their perspective.
Ben Southwood discusses high pay on BBC 5 Live
Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute, Ben Southwood, was interviewed by BBC 5 Live on the issue of high pay and Fat Cat Tuesday. Read the full interview here. (Starts o2:39:49)
Sam Bowman's comments on Fat Cat Tuesday feature on ITV News Online
Executive director of the ASI, Sam Bowman, has had his comments on Fat Cat Tuesday and high pay featured on ITV News Online.
The Adam Smith Institute dismissed the High Pay Centre calculations as "pub economics, not serious analysis" and said the group had failed to grasp the true value of CEOs."Chief executives can be worth quite a lot to firms, as is shown by huge moves in company share prices when good CEOs are hired, or bad CEOs are fired," the think tank's executive director Sam Bowman said.
Kate Andrews discusses high pay on BBC Breakfast
Head of Communications at the Adam Smith Institute, Kate Andrews, took part in a debate for BBC News on the High Pay Centre’s promotion of Fat Cat Tuesday.
Sam Bowman's comments on high pay feature in the IBTimes and City AM
Executive Director Sam Bowman’s comments on the High Pay Centre’s promotion of ‘Fat Cat Tuesday’ have featured in the IBTimes and City AM. From the IBTimes:
However, the findings have been dismissed as "pub economics" by the Adam Smith Institute.
"None of these complaints are valid unless the High Pay Centre thinks it has a better way of estimating the value of executives to firms than those firms themselves," said Sam Bowman, the think tank's executive director.
"The High Pay Commission's complaints only make sense if you assume firms don't actually care about making money – which is to say, they don't make sense at all."
From City AM:
However, some have warned that the figures are oversimplified. The research from the High Pay Centre think tank has been criticised by the Adam Smith Institute as “pub economics, not serious analysis”
“None of these complaints are valid unless the High Pay Centre thinks it has a better way of estimating the value of executives to firms than those firms themselves. Can the High Pay Centre tell us how much chief executives are worth? If not, how can they say that they are overpaid?” said the think tank’s executive director Sam Bowman.
Sam Bowman discusses Fat Cat Tuesday on Sky News
Executive director at the ASI, Sam Bowman, took part in a debate for Sky News about Fat Cat Tuesday and why CEOs are worth their pay.
Media contact:
emily@adamsmith.org
Media phone: 07584778207
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