Tory 2012: Birmingham city council development director Mark Barrow said today that building in the green belt is needed to help meet the city’s housing needs.
Speaking at a British Property Federation event at the Conservative Party Conference, Barrow said a serious debate is needed on building in the green belt.
He said Birmingham needs to build about 100,000 homes over the next 15 years and sites have been identified to provide 40,000 of those.
But the rest may need to be built on green belt land surrounding the city, he said.
“We have a building requirement the likes of which have not been seen since the 1930s,” said Barrow.
“We will have to have a green belt discussion in a serious way.
“The green belt was designated in the 1940s, but it is all a bit of an emotive subject.
“Around 10% of the UK is currently developed and models show that if we built every proposed project in the UK (in the green belt), that figure would only go up to 11.5%.”
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