Report reveals where Labour would build on Birmingham's Green Belt

Report reveals where Labour would build on Birmingham's Green Belt

The Council has in the last few days made public a document that provides the strongest indication of where Labour plan to build over 20,000 houses on Birmingham’s Green Belt

Readers of my blog will know that Councillor Jerry Evans (Lib Dem, Springfield Ward) has been digging up evidence on the consequences of Birmingham City Council Leader, Councillor Sir Albert Bore’s recent announcement to “accelerate the city’s house building target of 70,000 by 2026.”

If you look at my previous blog at http://martinmullaney.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/albert-bores-70000-new-houses-mad-and.html  you see that 43,000 is the limit on the number of houses that could be built in Birmingham, before the need to build on the Green Belt, industrial land and back gardens. That therefore leaves Labour with the 27,000 houses to find space for.

In the last full Council meeting on 3^rd July, senior Labour politicians refused to rule out the need to build on the Green Belt. There’s a good report on this on the Birmingham Mail at  http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories/2012/07/06/labour-will-not-rule-out-building-homes-on-birmingham-s-green-belt-97319-31334291/

So the question is: where on the Green Belt would Labour build these 26,000 houses.

First of all a few calculations to work out how much land would 26,000 houses require. The Council at the moment allow 30 to 70 houses per hectare. So let’s assume for simplicity sake we work on the basis that any new housing estates on the Green Belt have a density of 50 houses per hectare.

So to build 26,000 houses will require (26000/50) hectares or 520 hectares.

The report that has been made public within the last week, can be seen at: http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/corestrategy ; click on ‘associated documents’ ; click on ‘SHLAA 2011 Appendix 1-14 (Size: 3.33 Mb Type: PDF )’

The map showing where the houses would be built on Green Belt land can be seen on page 17.

The list of the developers who are willing to offer up this land can be seen on pages 15 and 16

....and what is the total area that has been offered up by the developers? At the bottom of page 16: 534hectares or 480hectares within the Birmingham boundary.

The map shows that the largest chunk of the land will be to the east of Sutton Coldfield – all in strong Conservative voting areas, so no worries there for Labour.

The nearest contentious bit to Moseley and Kings Heath is next to the Maypole. A large slice of land that will have the impact of filling in the green space between Birmingham and Wythall. Maybe in the future Wythall will become part of Birmingham?