The bar for permitting exception sites for affordable housing on Green Belt land needs to be set far higher. Whilst affordable homes are important, protection of the Green Belt is even more important, and once destroyed, can never be reclaimed. There is a good analogy here with climate change – stop damaging the Green Belt now before it is too late.

If it can “be demonstrated that non-Green-Belt alternative sites are not available” for affordable housing, then the test criteria for this “demonstration” are too weak. More sites outside the Green Belt can always be found. Simply forcing developers to actually stick to the 40% target for affordable housing within non-Green-Belt developments, rather than continually allowing them to not meet these targets on the grounds of “commercial viability” would solve the whole problem. The shareholders of major developers have no financial problems. These companies make large profits, and currently find it more profitable to engage lawyers to argue about how few affordable homes they can get away with building than to actually build them. Green Belt land should not be the victim in this failed process.