‘There is not enough room': The village at the forefront of Starmer's green-belt revolution

Telegraph

31-03-2025

Ignore the cars haring down the A30 and Grove End is practically picturesque: almost 12 acres of (mostly) green fields, framed by trees and two cottages perched atop the slope, a stone's throw from the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh 's royal residence at Bagshot Park. The area, sandwiched between the villages of Bagshot and Windlesham, Surrey, has been protected from development for the best part of a century thanks to its green-belt status. But after the Government's reclassification of 'low quality' green-belt areas to 'grey belt' – which can now be built upon – Bagshot has found itself on the front line of Sir Keir Starmer's housing strategy. This is, some locals fear, 'the thin end of the wedge'; a plan that could not only shatter the identities of England's historical villages, but become a green light to turn ancient woodlands and nature reserves into tower blocks.
Strategy overhauls and policy rewrites mean that last year's rejected planning application for 135 homes in Grove End has, as of this month, been overturned. This about-turn is 'daft', according to Gill Bensman, whose family has lived in Bagshot since the 1700s. 'It's just ridiculous; there is not enough room,' the 55-year-old tells me from the Half Moon, a pub a mile down the road from the development site. With schools, roads and doctors' surgeries full, 'the infrastructure just really just can't handle it,' she says of pressures that are leading to 'horrendous' pollution and eroding the pleasures of local life. 'It's not a village anymore.'
Ahead of last Wednesday's Spring Statement, Rachel Reeves outlined a £2 billion pledge to build 18,000 more affordable homes in England, which the chancellor said would go some way to 'fixing the housing crisis'. It builds on promises made by Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, who last year called the dearth of housebuilding under the Conservative government a sign of its 'scandalous legacy… We simply do not have enough homes.' Labour has committed to building 1.5 million properties by the end of its election term in 2029; the equivalent of 300,000 per year, a figure not reached since the 1970s.
A big swath of those homes, Labour insists, will come from building on the grey belt – much of which 'isn't green rolling hills but poor-quality scrub-land', Rayner said. According to their 'golden rules' of housing development, 'councils should build on brownfield land [which has been built on previously, and is now either abandoned or under-used] first, and any grey-belt development should prioritise previously developed land – like disused car parks,' according to a spokesman from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. 'Our reforms will protect our natural landscapes and deliver the homes and infrastructure we need, so we can restore the dream of home ownership to families across the country.'
The green belt is thought to account for 12.6 per cent of land in England, less than 1 per cent of which could be considered grey belt, according to analysis from Knight Frank. But many remain frustrated that glib wording outlined in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) in December is rife for misinterpretation, with irreversible results. In February, Lord Moylan, the peer leading an inquiry into the Government's planning reforms, said that this would result in 'speculative applications to test the boundaries of the definition', with formerly protected areas left to pay the price.
Grove End has never been developed, for instance, and appears to defy a core objective of the green belt – to maintain separate towns, and stop them merging into one another via urban sprawl. 'The way it's worded is really strange,' Richard Wilson, a councillor for the Bagshot ward who sat on the planning committee, says of the NPPF. During the appeal a fortnight ago, 'the barrister for the developer argued that they're literally not towns' – Bagshot and Windlesham are villages – so the existing rules did not apply. Semantics, he explains over the roar of the A30, is 'why we've lost' – plus the cash required by councils to fight developers. 'So much money is involved in this' – Wilson says that hiring a consultant cost the council £8,000, which 'has obviously gone down the drain… It's an arms race that the council can't participate in,' according to the 53-year-old. 'It's a losing battle we're fighting now.'
A spokesman for Somerston Development Projects, Grove End's developers, said that the site 'will bring forward much-needed affordable housing to the area – providing local homes for local people', as well as improving access to Windlesham golf course. Half the homes on the plot will be affordable, according to plans submitted to Surrey Heath council, meeting the minimum requirement outlined in the Government's golden rules for grey-belt development.
Some locals are more positive about the plans. Shirley Day, who has run Bagshot's gift shop for the past 27 years, says: 'It won't affect me, except it could bring in customers.' Day, 80, agrees that there need to be more affordable homes in the area, but has found a growing disconnect between new arrivals and local life. The same has been true of the local Waitrose, opened in 2015 (in a ribbon-cutting ceremony helmed by Michael Gove); and the influx of buyers who poured into the area during Covid. Newer residents tend not to mosey through local spots in the village, she says, instead using the opportunity to live somewhere greener than they did before, commute to work, and engage in little else in the locale. Much as she hopes Grove End will prove useful for business, 'I don't think it will [encourage people into Bagshot],' she mulls. 'No, not at all… It will be good for them [to live in the area], but I can't see it's going to be any different for the village – except the traffic.'
Allan Howland, who runs an estate agent in Bagshot village with his three sons, agrees too that 'we need more housing. But the builders just cram properties in, and it just makes it a very unpleasant place to live.' The area can cope with more development, Howland, 65, says, but Grove End – a comparatively small space hamstrung by its proximity to the Duke and Duchess's residence, protected nesting bird zones and being ringed by the A30 and A322 – makes it a curious choice.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the average house price in Surrey Heath was £443,000 in 2024 (compared with £282,000 in the UK), up 4.7 per cent from the year prior. Nearly a third of UK 25- to 29-year-olds still live with their parents, compared with 20 per cent in the year 2006-07 – and, with building sluggish, skilled workers dwindling, mortgage rates substantially higher than they were during the pandemic and the fall in stamp duty thresholds slashing ownership prospects for many first-time buyers, serious concerns remain about encouraging people on to the housing ladder.
Existing empty homes could be part of the solution. There are more than 600,000 dwellings in England currently vacant, and more than 200,000 second homes in part-time use. 'The planning system is already making great efforts to bring long-term vacant homes back into use, and to enable the redevelopment of brownfield sites. But there simply aren't enough of either to meet the need for new homes,' says Paul Smith, the director of the the Strategic Land Group, a company that helps secure planning permission for landowners. 'Increasing the size of our housing stock to the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] average would need another three million homes to be built' – making the Government's 1.5 million target 'a drop in the ocean compared to that level of need. Delivering an adequate number of new homes will need our towns and cities to grow both upwards and outwards, and grey-belt policy is one of the tools that will help manage that.'
Research in 2019 showed that green-belt policies reduced housing construction in green belts by around 80 per cent, leading to a 4 per cent increase in house prices, and 'a negative welfare cost of about £7.5 billion a year'. While many residents in their vicinity worry that turning green belts grey will hamper the natural environment, Smith points out that other government designations, such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest and National Landscapes (formerly Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty), are already in situ to protect them.
Within former green-belt areas, however, the reclassification remains hard for some to swallow. 'Why do we need all these houses? Why can't they go up north, where there's more green land?... We don't want any more buildings,' Bensman rails, adding that policies have been rushed in by a Government with little understanding of the places they plan to transform radically. 'The Government can reduce their pay packet, come and live in the area and actually commute up the A30 every day, and just open their eyes.'