'Local Green Belt must be protected' - read the latest column from Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard

In its general election manifesto, the Labour Party said it was “committed to preserving the Green Belt which has served England’s towns and cities well.”

The Government’s new planning reforms show that to be yet another broken promise. Shropshire’s Green Belt is now under huge threat.

The previous Conservative government scrapped unpopular top-down housebuilding targets, instead allowing councils to determine local housing need.

With Labour in power, the ‘Whitehall knows best’ approach is back. Every council in England has been handed a mandatory housing quota. Ideology before democracy is becoming a hallmark of Keir Starmer’s government.

Most local councils were quick to condemn the new housing targets, describing them as “wholly unrealistic”, but Ministers have chosen to ignore these warnings.

Although the highest demand for housing is in urban areas (which also have the infrastructure required for new homes) rural areas have been given the largest and most disproportionate housing quotas.

It is no coincidence that the Government is asking traditionally Labour voting cities like London, Birmingham and Liverpool to build fewer houses, while rural areas like Shropshire have seen their housing targets doubled with a stroke of Angela Rayner’s pencil. 

This shows Labour’s complete disregard for rural Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin’s diminishing green spaces.

To enforce the new targets, the Government is launching a two-pronged attack on rural areas and their residents.

First, it plans to release Green Belt for development by downgrading parts of it to ‘Grey Belt’, a newly invented category of land which makes it easier to bulldoze local open spaces and green fields.

Second, the Government wants to ban objections to unpopular planning applications. 

In the last Parliament, Labour tabled a motion defending “the right of communities to object to individual planning applications”. 

That was the right approach, but now it has been discarded. 

In the last year, I have supported hundreds of Albrighton residents who joined together to oppose plans for 800 homes on Green Belt land in the town. Shifnal, Muxton, Newport, Wellington and many villages are under assault from Labour’s disregard for green spaces.

Furthermore, where there is new housing, there must be new infrastructure. That includes physical infrastructure like roads and sewers, but also social infrastructure like GP surgeries and schools. For towns like Shifnal, it is concerning that Labour has no realistic plan to fund the infrastructure required to support its growing population.

Clearly, some new housing is needed, but it needs to be built in sustainable numbers, in the right place, and with supporting infrastructure. Labour’s planning reforms will fail on all three counts.

Shockingly, the Liberal Democrats are calling for even higher housing targets than Labour. 

Only the Conservatives are standing up for Shropshire’s Green Belt and green spaces. 

Shropshire Council local elections in May will be the first chance to send the Government a message that local Green Belt must be protected.