please empty your brain below
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There are some peculiar pockets of Green Belt which are hard to understand. Several fields alongside the north circular are protected. They are surrounded by industrial land, but remain as green islands.
There is an online map of green belt parcels which I assume you’ve linked to somewhere in your post. There’s certainly a lot of scope for rationalisation.
Dan | 07.04.22 - 8:35 a.m. | #
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Thin end of the wedge. The Green Belt has already been nibbled away and continues to be so. Saying that this was not the kind of area envisaged when the Green Belt was set up sounds like an application from a house building conglomerate as a first salvo in applying to build a new major conurbation. A very slippery slope.
Dave B | 07.04.22 - 8:36 a.m. | #
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My understanding is that greenbelt is not intended to protect "quality" countryside. Rather it is intended to prevent urban sprawl. So the "quality" of the land covered is irrelevant. Further, any idea that poor quality land (however defined) should be removed from the greenbelt would incentivise landowners to degrade their land to that end, which would be self-defeating. Some landowners already seem to do this and present the bleakness of the land as an argument to try to justify development at least for their PR campaign even if it has (so far as I am aware) little evidential value for planning purposes.
ML | 07.04.22 - 8:42 a.m. | #
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I’ve looked at this very site as part of work of TfL/GLA into options to accommodate growth. Our rough idea was to have a dedicated busway linking in with Barkingside station.
Bits of the green belt are odd because it was a hard cut off in terms of introducing it. What this means is you have estates that are half finished leaving seemingly random bits of green belt all over the place.
David | 07.04.22 - 8:43 a.m. | #
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It is not a requirement of Green Belt status that land has to be ‘pretty’. This land would appear to meet at least three of the criteria for Green Belt protection: to check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas; to prevent neighbouring towns from merging into one another; and to assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment. In my opinion, a more concerted effort should be made to develop brownfield land than looking for easier pickings in the Green Belt. According to CPRE, there is enough suitable brownfield land available for more than a million new homes – see here.
And Redbridge Council has plans to add to Fairlop Waters Country Park, to include some of the land you mentioned – see here.
Alan S | 07.04.22 - 8:55 a.m. | #
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Ploughed fields are absolutely rubbish for biodiversity. They may be 'green' but they're hardly thronging with life.
Ed | 07.04.22 - 9:00 a.m. | #
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I'd argue a bit more urban sprawl in this particular location would be a good thing.
Plans to extend Fairlop Waters Country Park cover the parcel I've called 'Barkingside East'. Great. It'd make the area much more appealing than it is now (but would cut off the Central line from any future development further east).
diamond geezer | Homepage | 07.04.22 - 9:08 a.m. | #
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As the UK becomes a no go area for investors who want to avoid their assets being seized, property values may well drop.
Still Anon | 07.04.22 - 9:19 a.m. | #
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"They nearly built London's third airport out this way"
Actually I recall reading an old wartime-era plan by the City Corporation that proposed putting London's main airport -- predating Heathrow and Gatwick -- out there. It would have had a Tube connection from day one, unlike LHR, which didn't get connected until 1977.
AlanBG | 07.04.22 - 9:42 a.m. | #
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Ploughed fields are somewhat important as they produce the food we eat... Personally I agree with the argument, that even if the Green Belt isn't perfect, it's a slippery slope when people start tinkering with it.
I would argue that London has plenty of land and housing, but it's badly used. Vast numbers of recently built and empty flats owned by foreign investors, sprawling retail parks each with their own massive car park...
Mikey C | 07.04.22 - 10:31 a.m. | #
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If the underlying geology is the same as that of nearby quarries, there must have been a lot of interest thwarted so far by the Green Belt status.
Bob L-S | 07.04.22 - 10:45 a.m. | #
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When Metroland and its contemporaries were rolled out across north and south London in the 1920s and 30s, there were certain expectations:
- a tube or commuter rail station
- interlinked bus services
- houses with gardens, front and rear
- a parade of shops that catered for every daily need, with flats above
- a garage/petrol station
- a park
- schools
- a health centre
- a tennis club
- a bowling green
- a church
- some sort of village hall/theatre space
- streets that led somewhere, rather than cul-de-sacs
- allotments
- playing fields
That’s an incomplete list, but you can picture dozens of suburbs that follow this model. Putting aside the green belt concerns, if a similar opportunity arose today, how would we plan it? What are the essentials for civilised suburban living, 100 years on?
Philip | 07.04.22 - 10:56 a.m. | #
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I'm fed up with everybody trying to sell off England's Green and Pleasant Land!
Better idea, any vacant property owned by an absentee oversees investor, or 2nd home unoccupied for 3/4 of the year (eg in Cornwall) should be requisitioned by the local authority for social housing.
Problem solved!
Cornish Cockney | 07.04.22 - 11:15 a.m. | #
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They would also expect a large neo-Tudor or Modernist pub with multi-bars and offering drinking, restaurant and function room spaces.
Kim | 07.04.22 - 11:28 a.m. | #
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If events had taken a different turn, Fairlop Plain might have been covered by housing nearly a century ago. The plans for an airport there - first by Ilford Borough Council, then by the City of London Corporation - were put forward in response to London County Council’s proposal for a housing estate there on similar lines to that at Becontree. The matter went to a public inquiry in 1935, with a recommendation that ‘general approval be given to the proposal of the Ilford Borough Council to acquire the land known as Fairlop Plain for an aerodrome and other purposes’. In 1936, the City of London Corporation came forward with its own plans for an airport – larger than Ilford Council’s proposal – and much of the land was subsequently sold by the Crown Commissioners to the Corporation.
Alan S | 07.04.22 - 12:46 p.m. | #
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Agree that building on this area would increase overall utility. Unfortunately a sensible planning system relies on everyone trusting that those in power will make decisions in the public interest and will not be susceptible to corruption. Without that trust, strict rules like 'absolutely no building on the green belt' make sense.
People seem to automatically assume building over the countryside will uglify it but that's not necessarily true - Cambridge city centre is far more beautiful than your average piece of Cambridgeshire farmland for example.
Alan | 07.04.22 - 12:47 p.m. | #
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It's not a housing crisis, it's a population crisis. We are already a net importer of food (and energy). Building over more farmland only increases are dependency on imports. World events at the moment should make it obvious that is a bad idea to have to rely on imports, we need to be self sufficient. Imports also mostly come to the UK by sea or air, so more polluting.
We really should be taking steps to stabilise or even reduce the population long term not build build build and continue to concrete over ever more of our country.
Jon Combe | 07.04.22 - 5:54 p.m. | #
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Your proposal does not consider the need for golf courses around Havering. Living in Collier Row I am surrounded by these necessary sporting venues, at least 6 a short drive from my house. Your proposed housing development will need at least another 10 more for white van man to swing his clubs.
David | Homepage | 07.04.22 - 5:56 p.m. | #
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Agreed. My suggestion - North Weald Airfield, close to the M11 and the end of the Central line!
James Scantlebury | 07.04.22 - 8:53 p.m. | #
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This is not the best of farmland but it grows food. Soil of any kind is vital to civilisation. We cover it up at our peril - we don’t get it back. If this lot is covered, then it gives the excuse for more loss of soil and food production. Farming is changing again. Low-till and no-till farming, eventually with cover crops and crop rotation, can restore the organic content and reduce fertiliser use, sucking CO2 from the air at the same time. That’s why we need to keep as much soil intact as we can.
What we do to the soil we do to ourselves.
So let’s not cover it up, eh?
Herbof | 07.04.22 - 9:35 p.m. | #
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It’s a few years old now but this report from the Adam Smith Institute regarding the issues with green belt and allowing some development is worth reading.
James | 07.04.22 - 9:50 p.m. | #
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Kim - yes, a big roadhouse was an essential. And a cinema, of course.
Philip | 08.04.22 - 6:22 a.m. | #
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Looking again at the Green Belt map here I notice that Waltham Forest is one of the only inner-ish London boroughs that is surrounded by its own Green Belt. Other London boroughs merge together.
This is a lovely feature of WF (I live there) so now I have reversed my view of the “random” bits of inner-ish London green belt. Let’s keep them!
Dan | 08.04.22 - 6:52 a.m. | #
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Better to continue converting the masses of redundant office space instead of building on green field sites.
John B | 08.04.22 - 8:37 p.m. | #
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If the GLA went through with the Ringways plan (a massive road building programme of the 1970s) then this area would have had a six lane motorway going right across it - the M12, complete with interchange where it crosses the A1112.
Maybe this is why this land has not been built on as it on the line of a projected motorway (which has a slim chance of ever being built now but would be very useful).
Read the details here.
Tangy | 10.04.22 - 11:33 a.m. | #
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Seems everyone else has treated your post as a serious proposal. I'm more minded to view it as a piece of trolling, taking on the guise of a property developer as ML referred to above.
Colin | Homepage | 12.04.22 - 7:42 a.m. | #
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Fairlop Plain (the fields are part of Fairlop Plain) is a Site of Interest for Nature Conservation and was recommended SMI status by the GLA so I think you must have missed all the wildlife there!
Incidentally the agricultural land there is Grade 1. May be take a better look next time you are in the area.
GL | 30.08.22 - 11:52 p.m. | #
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