Pooja Agrawal,
Chief Executive Officer,
Public Practice

Sadiq Khan recently announced that City Hall intends to help end London’s growing housing crisis by actively exploring releasing green belt land for development. Khan shared that much of this land isn’t scenic, and only 13% is accessible to the public. As London’s green belt has been protected from development since 1947, this announcement marks a significant change in policy. Given the enormous pressure on housing, how do we ensure that green belt development doesn’t compromise on quality and nature?

The Greater London Authority is undertaking a strategic review of the green belt to ensure development is taken forward “in the right way”, but officers on the ground have been assessing and guiding green belt development in their boroughs for some time.

Sophie El Nimr is an urban design officer at the London Borough of Havering, where over 50% of land is designated as green belt. She participated in Public Practice’s Associate Programme, having previously worked as an architect in the private sector. She now provides high-quality pre-application advice services on development proposals in Havering.

In assessing green belt proposals, determining the principle of development and the impact of landscape character is critical, prior to getting involved in detailed comments on the design approach. The recently published Havering Character Study (2024) identifies the need to ensure the borough’s rural edges and forgotten villages are celebrated, particularly as the green belt is well valued by residents. When determining this type of development, there’s a balance between ensuring a varied and contextual approach to growth and strengthening the well-used links into the green belt.

“When determining this type of development, there’s a balance between ensuring a varied and contextual approach to growth and strengthening the well-used links into the green belt”

Sophie has contributed to advising on design approaches that respect contextual design: “Delivering housing on isolated parcels of ‘green belt’ land that are poorly served by public or active transport opportunities or local services is not good plan-making for the provision of the homes we need for communities to thrive in. The strategic spatial issues and design challenges associated with ‘green belt’ land development relate to the proximity to existing or potential infrastructure, other settlements and the impact on landscape character, ecology and materials.”

Sophie’s experience demonstrates that building on green belt requires layers of decision-making at a strategic level to help demonstrate the council’s intentions, and then steering applications on a case-by-case scenario, holding applicants to account. Sophie’s urban design and housing skills have enabled her to make decisions based on professional judgement. However, given the lack of capacity and skills inhouse in local authorities and the ever-growing pressure on housing delivery, there’s a risk that outcomes will be compromised in the name of quantity.

For the last four years, Public Practice has produced a Recruitment and Skills Report that seeks to better understand the skills gaps and capacity challenges local government faces. In our 2024 report, we highlighted that the top skills placemaking teams needed but lacked were ecology and biodiversity, landscape architecture, infrastructure and utilities, and environment sustainability. The report also revealed that 2024’s local authority recruitment plans didn’t address the identified skill shortages. The recruitment plans were instead likely to reinforce existing capacity gaps, and so we expect many teams to remain under-resourced in these areas – areas which we believe are critical to green belt development.

While the government has provided funding for councils across the country to undertake green belt review and is supporting Public Practice to recruit its target of 300 new planning officers, we hope to work more closely with London boroughs to attract and retain the specialist skill sets in the public sector, which we believe are critical to ensuring green belt development is done in the best way possible.