Housing can be met without significant green belt loss – Carter Jonas

Housing need can be met without substantial loss to the green belt, according to research by Carter Jonas.

The national property consultancy’s new report, Rethinking the Green Belt, finds that, if all of the new government’s intended 1.5 million homes were built on green belt land (which Carter Jonas acknowledged would almost certainly not be the case), this would only equate to 3% of the current extent of the green belt.

The above assumes an average plot size of 0.033 hectares (Carter Jonas research).

Carter Jonas emphasised that any green belt “land take” would be “far lower” as the government was prioritising brownfield and non-green belt locations. “Hence the quantum of land to be removed from the green belt is likely to be pretty modest in the overall scheme of things.”

As a regional indication – and still based on delivering entirely on green belt – if housing stock were increased by 6% to align with Labour’s housebuilding target, in London, such an increase would require 21.1% of green belt land, Carter Jonas’ research shows.

Contrastingly, in five other English regions – the South East, North West, North East, East of England, West Midlands, and Yorkshire …