A glance through The MJ archives shows housing shortages have been a regular feature during its 117 years of coverage. Indeed, in its last issue of 1899, The MJ called for the countryside north west of central London, then dotted with medieval hamlets such as Harrow, Hendon and Ruislip, to be developed in order to solve the housing crisis in the capital's East End. This, of course, is precisely what happened. The opening of the Metropolitan line from central London as far as Buckinghamshire also opened up the countryside around it to frenetic housing development in the 1920s and 1930s. Within those two decades a huge rural area was swallowed up by identical suburbs, dubbed ‘Metroland'. On the eve of the Second World War, alarmed at the breakneck speed of development, planners created the green belt, which has lasted to this day, preventing market towns including Amersham and Chalfont from becoming clones of suburban Wembley or Edgware. I take an interest in this because I happen to live in one of these Metroland suburbs. Two streets from my 1930s home London stops dead and the urban roads continue into open countryside – the last vestiges of ancient Middlesex. As yet, no-one has suggested this green belt should be modified. But with the Government's new housing targets of 3m new homes by 2016, mainly in the south east, maybe we should be re-examining this strategy. My view is we should not, for three reasons. First, while we must be prepared to build more in our backyards in order to preserve our countryside while also being slightly flexible about the green belt in order to meet these targets, there are still plenty of brownfield sites up for grabs. Indeed, the amount of empty land in my leafy suburb which ought to be devoted to housing is almost a scandal. There is, for example, a huge site on the nearby A40, right next to a tube station, which has been vacant for the eight years I have lived in the area. IKEA's recent attempt to build a store was rejected on traffic grounds. Surely such a site would be suitable for flats for young single people and couples? Opposite is a shuttered hotel, recently purchased by Tesco, which has made repeated attempts to get permission to build a new superstore on the site. This, again, has been turned down, quite rightly, on traffic grounds. There are also, within a 10-minute walk, three petrol stations and six struggling pubs with car parking space, half of them at least, ripe for housing. And all of this is within a vicinity of one mile from my front door, and I am sure there are numerous examples elsewhere. A second reason for being ultra-cautious about tinkering with the green belt is the public's understandable suspicion of developers. They have a tendency to be in it for a fast buck, and if they can get away with cheap, monotonous housing, they will. Visits to new-build outskirts of towns such as Reading, Hatfield, Aylesbury or Crawley are dispiriting experiences. Yet some of the new housing in the growth area of Milton Keynes is superb, which shows building new homes can be done well and should be done as bodies including CABE are hopefully proving. The public will continue to fear development if more soulless boxes are to be built. Third, NIMBY-ism is often fuelled by the fact residents feel they have absolutely nothing to gain from extra housing, whereas they are likely to be more receptive to new shops or a refurbished high street. As the LGA has pointed out, new housing is not necessarily accompanied by infrastructure spending. And yet, there will have to be a point when we need to make a sensible decision about the green belt. In my area, a couple of fields earmarked for affordable housing would not be a problem, so long as it was understood this was the limit. After the Second World War when both Labour and Conservative Governments competed with each other to see who could build the most houses, virtually every village in the south east acquired a council estate. There is a strong argument for doing the same again, thereby also solving the problem of depopulating rural communities. We should, in short, make more use of our backyards for housing and leave the bulk of our green belt alone. n Michael Burton is the editor of The MJ
