Letter: ‘Grey Belt’ – It’s Time To Pump Up the Volume!

Published on: 15 Sep, 2026
Updated on: 15 Sep, 2026

Guildford’s “grey belt” according to the GBC-commissioned AECOM Study.

From Paula Moss

vice-chair of Effingham Parish Council and founder of Rural Roar

The Government is not listening to the widespread concerns about its “grey belt” policy.

Zöe Franklin’s polite enquiry about the impact of the updated NPPF on Guildford’s
green belt was welcome. But our MPs are not being nearly vocal enough.

Franklin confronted Angela Rayner with AECOM’s extraordinary finding that 92 per
cent of Guildford’s green belt is now defined as “grey belt”. Rayner brushed the
concern aside with an instruction to work with the local authority through its Local Plan and repeated that “brownfield has to be first”.

Last time I looked, identifying sites for the Local Plan was not in an MP’s job
description. More importantly, Rayner’s answer exposed the fundamental
contradiction at the heart of her policy.

The Government says, “brownfield first”, but its grey-belt test does not ask whether land is brownfield. It does not look for derelict buildings, abandoned petrol stations or disused car parks. It does not consider whether development would encroach into the countryside.

It assesses the merging of towns but turns a blind eye to villages.

Perhaps I am being old-fashioned, but if Angela Rayner genuinely wants councils to identify brownfield land first, the test might usefully ask: “Does this site contain features consistent with brownfield development?”

Instead, we have a test that is better at identifying high-performing green belt land for possible development than it is at identifying the brownfield land ministers claim to want.

It is a Trojan Horse policy: sold to the public as a way of releasing poor-quality and previously developed land but opening the floodgate to developers and speculators who see green fields around villages as easy prizes for profits.

Developers have already worked out that the fields separating villages are particularly vulnerable. The test gives no weight to villages merging with one another. It is as if those villages—and the communities living in them—simply do not exist.

Another revealing exchange came when Mark Pritchard MP asked what information
the Government held on the proportion of Shropshire’s green belt classified as grey
belt. The answer was that the Government does not collect this information.

So, ministers have introduced a policy capable of transforming England’s countryside but are not keeping a national record of how much green belt is being
classified as grey belt. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this Government does not care enough about the consequences even to measure them.

Pritchard also referenced a proposal for 800 homes in Albrighton that had been
refused by Shropshire Council that denied the land was grey belt. The Housing
Minister immediately explained how an inspector would reconsider grey-belt status at appeal.

We know how significant that route has become. GapSense found that where an
appeal principally turned on grey-belt status, 79 per cent succeeded. CPRE found
that 88 per cent of the homes in the major grey-belt schemes it examined would be
built on previously undeveloped countryside.

That is not brownfield first. It is countryside first. Democracy last.

It is, of course, wonderful to hear that Natural England has proposed extending the
Surrey Hills National Landscape, and Jeremy Hunt speaks for us all in welcoming it.

But that is all very well. An expanded National Landscape will not compensate for
the greying of the green belt around it—or even necessarily within it.

We now know that 85 per cent of the Chilterns National Landscape Area has been designated grey belt.

Let’s all hope The Surrey Hills are not levelled down and greyed up whilst we all sit around congratulating ourselves on its expansion.

The updated NPPF removed protected landscapes and heritage constraints from the grey-belt test. They may be considered later in determining an application, but they no longer prevent the land being labelled grey belt in the first place. And as we have learnt, the grey belt label sticks. The Planning Inspectorate is making sure of that.

So, while our representatives congratulate themselves on extending one protected
boundary, the Government is weakening the practical protection of green fields
across Surrey and the rest of the country.

When are our MPs going to wake up and smell the coffee burning on the stove?

Polite questions are no longer enough. Every Surrey MP should be demanding the
immediate suspension of this policy for applications around villages.

The test is not fit for purpose. It cannot see village coalescence, ignores countryside encroachment and does not even attempt to identify the brownfield land ministers insist must come first, and which relies upon our MPs pointing them out to the planning officers.

One might ask if this policy is actually intended to turn villages into the kind of urban places that are more likely to vote Labour. Of course that would be far too cynical.

Then again, wasn’t there a recent kerfuffle about Local government reorganisation
doing exactly that. Surely not.

The green belt is one of our greatest post-war planning achievements. It does not
belong only to the villages within it. It belongs to everyone who benefits from
preventing development sprawl and keeping countryside open between our towns
and communities.

We need more than warm words and hope. We need action. The first major party to
ditch this policy, respect the countryside and return meaningful planning power to
communities will win rural England at the next election.

That is not a prediction. It is a political inevitability.