Green belt land can be built on as a ‘last resort’ to tackle housing crisis, Government Housing Minister confirms
As The Sun revealed last week, local authorities in high demand areas will be forced to come up with tough new quotas to see hundreds of thousands more houses erected
THERESA May is gearing up to push councils to build homes on the Green Belt as a "last resort" in order to meet housing targets, the Housing Minister has revealed.
In a long-awaited plan to tackle the housing crisis, ministers are set to tell local authorities that the Green Belt is no longer sacrosanct for development - and will be encouraged to build on it once other options have been looked at.
Today Housing Minister Gavin Barwell said the Government were not planning to change existing protections for the spaces.
But he admitted that in special circumstances, councils can recommend it be built on.
"Planning policy says that Councils can remove land from green belt but only on exceptional circumstances. They should look at all options before doing that," he told the BBC's Sunday Politics.
And he said that doing so wouldn't solve the housing crisis alone, because the Green Belt is only 13 per cent of land in Britain.
In plans to be laid out later this week, ministers will also bring forward new incentives for landlords to offer longer tenancies, and changes to planning rules to encourage developers to build more affordable homes.
The Government has promised to build one million new homes by 2020 - but Mr Barwell admitted today they were currently behind on their target.
And he confessed that last year's house-building figures were embarrassing.
Mr Barwell said: "We desperately need more homes, we are too dependent on a small number of large developers.
";For 30 or 40 years governments have not been building enough homes."
But Tory MPs in rural seats could lead a rebellion against the plans. The Conservatives said they would protect Green Belt land as part of their 2015 election manifesto.