The green belt should not be considered sacrosanct when it comes to , the chair of Natural England has said. Writing for the Telegraph, Tony Juniper said housing and green space did not need to be competing interests. Endorsing the , he suggested it was acceptable to construct homes on areas of the green belt that are “bereft of wildlife”.
As head of the Government’s environment watchdog, Mr Juniper is responsible for ensuring the protection of the natural world, including enforcing regulations around development that housebuilders say have . The Labour Government has said it will need to build on “poor quality and ugly” green belt sites to meet its this Parliament. The green belt, which spans around an eighth of England, protects land around urban areas from development and is intended to stop towns and cities from spreading unchecked.
But Mr Juniper, the former head of Friends of the Earth, said the green belt was wrongly perceived as a haven for wildlife, and had “taken on totemic status and become sacrosanct”. But “parts of the green belt around England are pretty bereft of wildlife, have little value in terms of food production, and are closed off to the public,” he writes. “Development could unlock the vital funding needed to turbo-charge recovery in these areas.
” He added: “It is right that the Government should be focused on the so-called ‘grey belt’ - the lower quality land which has limited value for nature and wildlife. “For example, a.