From the BBC:
The number of new homes being approved on greenbelt land in England has increased five-fold in the last five years, according to figures obtained by the BBC...
Shock! Horror!
In 2009-10 planning permission was granted for 2,258 homes, while in 2014-15 the figure rose to 11,977... England has 14 green belts, covering 13% of total land.
(Remember that the UK is 10% developed and 90% farmland, forests, waterways etc, some of which counts as "greenbelt".)
In other words, we could build a whole additional country on the greenbelt, another 27 million homes with roads, factories, shops, schools etc to match and still have some left over.
At this rate, it would take over 2,000 years (27 million homes divided by 11,977 homes) to do this and we still wouldn't have filled up that small part of undeveloped land designated quite arbitrarily as greenbelt.
So I'm not losing any sleep over this just yet.
Tuesday, 9 June 2015
Fun with numbers: Building on greenbelt land has soared over five years
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3 comments:
I've probably said this before, but Oxford's Greenbelt is 9 times the size of the city. It's why it's such a horrible, dying place. You can't build a multiplex for miles, so there isn't one. People travel to Reading or Swindon to watch a movie or go shopping.
Property prices are pretty high in Oxford though...
Why on earth does the government still run the BBC?
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