'Sadiq Khan's green belt U-turn threatens Bromley's countryside'
When Sadiq Khan first ran for Mayor of London in 2016, he made a clear manifesto pledge: "I will oppose building on the green belt, which is even more important today than it was when it was created."
Now, he's looking to build on swathes of green belt land surrounding London, including Bromley — the borough with the largest green belt and more farms than anywhere else in the capital.
This huge policy reversal betrays many Londoners who took him at his word when he made this manifesto promise and separately pledged to be the "greenest mayor ever".
Despite having vast planning powers and substantial government funding, Mayor Khan hasn't delivered the homes London needs.
He's now looking for a quick way out.
His current London Plan — the capital's strategic planning document, which local authorities must follow — sets a target of building 52,000 homes annually.
However, housebuilding has fallen far short of this target, with fewer than 34,000 homes built on average per year since 2021.
An independent review of Mayor Khan's planning policies under the previous Conservative government revealed the reason for this failure.
The experts warned that his policies "work to frustrate rather than to facilitate the delivery of new homes on brownfield sites".
It added that without changes, "the current housing crisis will continue, if not worsen".
Sadly, the situation is getting worse.
New data from the analysts Molior found that developers started work on only 1,210 new homes in the first three months of this year.
Housebuilding in London isn't accelerating but is declining under Mayor Khan.
After nearly a decade at the helm, Mayor Khan is facing a crisis of his own making.
The new Labour government has imposed a target of 88,000 homes for London — more than twice the current rate of delivery.
The capital needs these homes, but Mayor Khan is looking for a way out.
But Labour's plan to move housebuilding from inner London, where the infrastructure is world-class, to Conservative-voting suburbs and rural villages in outer London is not as easy as Mayor Khan thinks.
Bromley may have a substantial green belt, but it's poorly connected and has little existing infrastructure.
If Mayor Khan builds thousands of new homes in the middle of fields, roads, schools, nurseries, and GP surgeries will need to be built.
But developers won't be able to pay for all this and meet the requirement that half of the homes be affordable.
Labour just don't understand life in outer London.
One Labour MP was surprised to learn that Biggin Hill has no train station.
While Bromley town centre has excellent rail connections to central London, it doesn't enjoy the orbital connections it needs with neighbouring towns and villages.
They think it's the same as inner London; it's not.
If Mayor Khan is serious about building new homes, he needs to address his failed policies that have frustrated housebuilding within inner London.
Breaking his promise and building on the green belt is not the housing panacea he thinks.
It's a recipe for unsustainable urban sprawl and the loss of London's precious remaining countryside.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
BC Ferries deal with Chinese shipyard makes waves in Ottawa
OTTAWA — BC Ferries set off a tidal wave of controversy on Tuesday after announcing a major shipbuilding deal with a Chinese state-owned enterprise, with the ripple effects of the decision reaching Ottawa. Vancouver Island Conservative MP Jeff Kibble raised the issue in Wednesday's question period, accusing the Liberal government of rewarding the provincial carrier for selling out Canada's national interest. 'The Liberals are set to hand over $30 million (in federal subsidies) to BC Ferries while BC Ferries hands over critical jobs, investment and industry to China,' said Kibble. BC Ferries said in a press release that it had awarded China Merchants Industry Weihai Shipyards (CMI Weihai) a contract to build four new vessels after a 'rigorous' global bidding process. Company CEO Nicolas Jimenez was quoted in the release as saying that CMI Weihai was the 'clear choice' for the contract given, among other factors, its 'proven ability to deliver safe, reliable vessels on dependable timelines.' Kibble blasted BC Ferries in the House of Commons for buying the ships from China instead of a 'proven Canadian shipbuilder' and pressed the Liberal government to tie federal ferry subsidies to buying Canadian-built ships. Liberal Transportation Minister Chrystia Freeland said that she shared Kibble's concerns about procurement 'at all levels of government' but wouldn't comment directly on the BC Ferries contract, calling it a provincial matter. One politician who hasn't hesitated to criticize the deal is the provincial minister responsible for BC Ferries. B.C. Transportation Minister Mike Farnworth was quick to distance himself from the decision, saying he was worried about the message it sends in the midst of Chinese economic aggression. 'I do have concerns around procuring services from any country that is actively harming Canada's economy through unfair tariffs or other protectionist trade practices. I have shared these concerns with BC Ferries,' Farnworth told the media. Yet, despite his reservations, he ruled out blocking the BC Ferries-CMI Weihai deal. 'BC Ferries is an independent company responsible for its own operational decisions,' said Farnworth. He added that he was 'disappointed' that the contract didn't include more involvement from Canadian shipyards. BC Ferries' head of fleet renewal, Ed Hooper, told Postmedia that no Canadian shipbuilders bid on the contract won by CMI Weihai. Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to ramp up Canadian shipbuilding during this spring's federal election campaign. The federal government previously awarded the Chinese state-owned company a contract to build a new vessel for east coast ferry operator Marine Atlantic, according to a 2023 filing from Transport Canada. The ship began service between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in July 2024. Federal Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound didn't respond to an inquiry from the National Post about the BC Ferries-CMI Weihai deal, and didn't indicate whether the federal government would continue to take bids from the company. A spokesperson with Public Services and Procurement Canada told the National Post that CMI Weihai does not appear on the agency's database of active bids. National Post rmohamed@ Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what's really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
MAGA Melts Down Over Trump ‘Deep State' Deportation Deal
The tech billionaire who bankrolled J.D. Vance's political rise is at the centre of a new MAGA war over fresh plans to use Big Brother surveillance to deport illegal immigrants. As protests rage in Los Angeles over Donald Trump 's immigration crackdown, some of the president's most loyal supporters are outraged over a 'deep state' contract awarded to Palantir Technologies, the controversial data mining company co-founded by venture capitalist and Vance campaign donor Peter Thiel. Government documents seen by the Daily Beast show the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) awarded Palantir the $30 million contract to develop a new surveillance platform known as 'ImmigrationOS' to help the agency identify and arrest illegal immigrants, make it easier to deport people, and track and report self-deportations with 'near real-time visibility'. Trump acolyte Laura Loomer embraced the idea, posting on X this week: 'Time to deploy @PalantirTech to Los Angeles to deal with the illegals. You know you'd love to see it.' But the right-wing provocateur faced a fierce backlash online from people ideologically opposed to government surveillance. Some viewed Palantir, which is named after the 'seeing stones' in The Lord of the Rings, as a tool of the Deep State; others warned Palantir 'won't stop there.' 'Laura, I don't care what the excuse is. One CANNOT in any way, shape or form claim to be a Conservative or Patriot and support this,' replied John Sabal, founder of Texas-based conservative event group 'The Patriot Voice', whose outraged response was one of thousands. 'It is literally antithetical to the notion of 'smaller government' and IN FAVOR of a big government totalitarian system.' Palantir has until September to develop a prototype of the ImmigrationOS software. Not having it, ICE warned, 'severely limits' its ability to expedite Trump's deportation plans and target the gangs MS-13 and Tren de Aragua. But the plan is particularly contentious because it comes after reports that the administration may also be using Palantir to build a database of personal information on American citizens. The New York Times reported earlier this month that the Trump administration had expanded Palantir's work across the federal government, giving it more than $113 million since Trump took office, as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Fact check: 2025 spending review claims
On Wednesday Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves delivered the Labour Government's first spending review, outlining its spending plans for the next few years. We've taken a look at some of the key claims. How much is spending increasing by? At the start of her speech Ms Reeves announced that 'total departmental budgets will grow by 2.3% a year in real terms'. That headline figure doesn't tell the full story, however. Firstly, 2.3% is the average annual real-terms growth in total departmental budgets between 2023/24 and 2028/29. That means it includes spending changes that have already been implemented, for both the current (2025/26) and previous (2024/25) financial years. The average annual increase between this year and 2028/29 is 1.5%. Therefore, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said, 'most departments will have larger real-terms budgets at the end of the Parliament than the beginning, but in many cases much of that extra cash will have arrived by April'. Secondly, it's worth noting that the 2.3% figure includes both day-to-day (Resource DEL) and investment (Capital DEL) spending. Capital spending (which funds things like infrastructure projects) is increasing by 3.6% a year on average in real terms between 2023/24 and 2029/30, and by 1.8% between 2025/26 and 2029/30. Day-to-day departmental budgets meanwhile are seeing a smaller average annual real-terms increase – of 1.7% between 2023/24 and 2028/29 and 1.2% between 2025/26 and 2028/29. Which departments are the winners and losers? Ms Reeves touted substantial spending increases in some areas (for example, the 3% rise in day-to-day NHS spending in England), but unsurprisingly her statement did not focus on areas where spending will decrease. Changes to Government spending are not uniform across all departments, and alongside increases in spending on things like the NHS, defence and the justice system, a number of Government departments will see their budgets decrease in real terms. Departments facing real-terms reductions in overall and day-to-day spending include the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (this factors in reductions in aid spending announced earlier this year to offset increased defence spending), the Home Office (although the Government says the Home Office's budget grows in real terms if a planned reduction in asylum spending is excluded) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Did the Conservatives leave a '£22 billion black hole'? Ms Reeves made a claim we've heard a number of times since it first surfaced in July 2024 – that the previous Conservative government left a '£22 billion black hole in the public finances'. That figure comes from a Treasury audit that forecast a £22 billion overspend in departmental day-to-day spending in 2024/25, but the extent to which it was unexpected or inherited is disputed. The IFS said last year that some of the pressures the Government claimed contributed to this so-called 'black hole' could have been anticipated, but others did 'indeed seem to be greater than could be discerned from the outside'. An Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) review of its March 2024 forecast found an estimated £9.5 billion of additional spending pressures were known to the Treasury at that point in time, but were not known to the OBR as it prepared its forecast. It's true that this review didn't confirm the £22 billion figure, but it also did not necessarily prove that it was incorrect, because Labour's figure included pressures which were identified after the OBR prepared its forecast and so were beyond the scope of the OBR's review. We've written more about how the Government reached the figure of £22 billion in our explainer on this topic. How big is the increase in NHS appointments? Ms Reeves took the opportunity to congratulate Health Secretary Wes Streeting for delivering 'three-and-a-half million extra' hospital appointments in England. The Government has previously celebrated this as a 'massive increase', particularly in light of its manifesto pledge to deliver an extra two million appointments a year. Ms Reeves' claim was broadly accurate – data published last month shows there were 3.6 million additional appointments between July 2024 and February 2025 compared to the previous year. But importantly that increase is actually smaller than the 4.2 million rise that happened in the equivalent period the year before, under the Conservative government – as data obtained by Full Fact under the Freedom of Information Act and published last month revealed. What do announcements on asylum hotels, policing, nurseries and more mean for the Government's pledges? Ms Reeves made a number of announcements that appear to directly impact the delivery of several pre-existing Labour pledges, many of which we're already monitoring in our Government Tracker. (We'll be updating the tracker to reflect these announcements in due course, and reviewing how we rate progress on pledges as necessary). The Chancellor announced an average increase in 'police spending power' of 2.3% a year in real terms over the course of the review period, which she said was the equivalent of an additional £2 billion. However, as police budgets comprise a mix of central Government funding and local council tax receipts, some of this extra spending is expected to be funded by increases in council tax precepts. Ms Reeves said this funding would help the Government achieve its commitment of 'putting 13,000 additional police officers, PCSOs and special constables into neighbourhood policing roles in England and Wales', a pledge we're monitoring here. The spending review also includes funding of 'almost £370 million across the next four years to support the Government's commitment to deliver school-based nurseries across England', which Ms Reeves said would help the Government deliver its pledge to have 'a record number of children being school-ready'. The Chancellor also committed to ending the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this Parliament, with an additional £200 million announced to 'accelerate the transformation of the asylum system'. When we looked last month at progress on the Government's pledge to 'end asylum hotels' we said it appeared off track, as figures showed the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels was higher at the end of March 2025 than it was when Labour came into Government.