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National Planning Policy Framework

The NPPF says that in the absence of such a plan there should be a presumption in favour of sustainable development, but regardless of whether there is a local plan, someone must still decide about what constitutes sustainable development. The second issue I want to address is the choice of land for development. There are many competing pressures, and we want to protect as much green space as possible. That point was made eloquently in this week's Westminster Hall debate initiated by the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry). Because of our heritage, we have a lot of previously developed brownfield land and, building on the foundations laid by a previous Conservative Government, Lord Prescott created the ““brownfield first”” policy. It was very successful. Last year, 76% of new dwellings were built on brownfield sites, up from 55% in 1989. We need only look at the centre of cities like Leeds and Manchester to see that it is working, or consider that in the last decade the proportion of new homes built on the green belt fell from 4% to 2%. It is estimated that there are almost 62,000 hectares of brownfield land in England that are ready for building on, which would be enough to build about 1.2 million homes. The Minister appears to argue that a"““land with the least environmental or amenity value””" approach is the same as this ““brownfield first”” policy. If that is the case, why change it? If it is not the case, then we can understand why people are worried. Indeed, the Government's own impact assessment refers to"““removing the target and the priority for brownfield development””."