Yesterday at the Labour Party conference, Keir Starmer announced plans to build over one million affordable homes on ‘previously protected’ green belt land to address the housing crisis.

Starmer’s ‘big build’ project would see the release of ‘low-quality’ green belt land, so that it can be developed into a ‘new generation’ of towns, branded the ‘grey belt’.

“There is an urgent need to build new houses, but we’re not going to help improve the lives of people by building poorly insulated, poorly constructed, expensive to run boxes in sterile estates devoid of nature,” warns Craig Bennett, chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts coalition of nature groups.

Labour comments that all new houses would conform to the future home standards being considered by the current government.

While green belt development has historically been rejected by politicians for landscape and habitat reasons, causing debate on all levels, research from Woods Hardwick shows that less than 2% of the green belt would be needed for new-build construction for the government to meet its one million new homes by the next election target.

Tony Juniper, chief executive of Natural England says, “Meeting our targets for nature recovery while at the same time providing more homes is certainly possible to do, not least because of new tools such as biodiversity net gain, local nature recovery strategies, and nutrient neutrality.

The current government previously announced plans to redevelop brownfield sites to support its new-build target.

Both plans prompt more questions, like how much green belt land will be developed? Will the new-builds conform to ecological standards? And how will the developed site’s local wildlife be protected?