Rayner faces backlash over plans to 'bulldoze' country

Angela Rayner is facing an angry backlash against controversial planning reforms set to force councils to surrender swathes of the green belt and see housebuilding surge by more than 60 per cent.

- KATE DEVLIN

The deputy prime minister has been accused of planning to “bulldoze” the countryside and waging a “war on rural England” as Labour scrambles to meet its pledge to build 1.5 million new homes.

Councils have already protested that the target is impossible to achieve, while the National Trust has warned the government’s push to build nearly 400,000 homes a year risks harming “some of the most valuable ‘green’ land to local communities”. The conservation charity said Labour’s idea of the “grey belt”, what it sees as low-quality green belt areas, was too broad.

Under the plans, which have led to claims they would greenlight housebuilding in an area larger than Surrey, councils will have to review their green belt boundaries. And they will have to use “grey belt” land to meet ambitious mandatory targets to build hundreds of thousands of new homes a year. Compared to recent levels, that would see housebuilding in England increase by more than 60 per cent, from 229,942 to 370,000 a year.

Ministers have also updated initial plans from the summer to say that more of these houses will have to be built in the South and fewer in the North. The “grey belt” has also been defined for the first time as green belt land that “does not strongly contribute to green belt purposes”.

Those purposes include limiting urban sprawl, stopping neighbouring towns from merging and preserving the special character of historic towns, but two other purposes – safeguarding the countryside from encroachment and assisting in urban regeneration – have been dropped.