Enough brownfeild land for millions of homes

The Government in their desperation to build our way out of a rescission and please the Conservative supporting building industry are increasing allowing the use greenfield land for housing development. In the last three years developers have given some £3.3 million to the party, including large gifts from companies seeking to develop rural land in the UK. However this is not the whole picture of the power of the developers, the Conservative Planning Forum raises around £150,000 a year for the Conservative party funds and it charges members £2,500 to meet senior MPs to discuss policy and planning issues. 

Recently in a report by the think tank Civitas which is based on Government figures there is enough brownfield land in the United Kingdom to build between 1.5 million to 2.5 million homes. Of course the Government dispute this figures even though they are based on their own statistics, but this is what you would expect from a Conservative government that  walks hand in hand with the developers and clearly has a hidden agenda. The fact remains that we should be developing this land before we start digging up the farmland of Britain and covering it concrete and tarmac, especially given that in many cases this available land is in the areas where housing is actually needed.

The problem with developers is that are reluctant to clean up brownfield sites before development as there are no incentives to do so financially which would make it economically viable. Depending on the site this can be expensive and it is problem the Government is avoiding addressing. This is poor thinking by the Government since a lot of the brownfield sites scare our cities, adversely affecting the value of land and communities around them.  These brownfield sites are often ugly blots on the landscape that need to be cleaned up and best way to do this is to utilise the land rather than letting it remain idle and derelict. In fact most cases communities welcome such developments since they add to the environment rather than take away from it.

Even where I live, which is in a village in rural England there an example of successful brownfield development. The village once home to Ruddles Brewery which stopped making beer in the village in 1999. This left a large brownfield site at the edge of the village which has since been successfully developed into housing. Although the development is not without some degree of controversy within the village, as the architecture of the buildings which isn't in keeping with the rest of the surrounding buildings, nearly all would agree it was better than having a derelict industrial site on the edge of the village.   

The question then is how should the Government approach the cleaning up and redevelopment of these brownfield sites. Well they need to look to see what other counties are doing. For example, in the United  developers get full tax relief to cover the costs of cleaning up contaminated land this could be introduced into the UK and to it added a greenfeild development tax to encourage the use of brownfield sites and ensure that Government didn't lose out in too much revenue. These are two really simple measures and add to that changes to the planning laws that could be introduced to protect the countryside from the developers, we would see a move to develop brownfield land.

Surely it is just common sense to develope brownfield sites that could go a long way to helping solve the housing crisis rather than using beautiful and productive countryside in a country that already can't feed it own population. We need that countryside for your children and there children's children. We can't cover the countryside in houses, especially when there is land available to develop houses where they are actually needed. It is time to think and protect the countryside while using the land we have wisely and not like fools.