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Local planning authority green belt statistics: England 2007

Published	31 January 2008

This Statistical Release presents information on designated Green Belt land in individual local authorities in England. It relates to the extent of Green Belt in 2007 and is based on a methodology in which the extent of the Green Belt is captured in digital (computerised) form from proposal maps in development plans. This approach, using digitised boundary, provides much more reliable figures than those published prior to 2000.

In 2007, designated Green Belt land amounted to 1,635,670 hectares, about 13 per cent of the land area of England. Results are shown below at a regional level. 

Area of designated Green Belt land: 2007	Area: Hectares
England	1,635,670
North East	73,000
North West	260,300
Yorkshire and Humber	264,450
East Midlands	79,900
West Midlands	268,770
East Anglia*	26,270
London/wider South East**	554,240
South West	109,640

*Government Office for East of England region, excluding Bedfordshire, Essex and Hertfordshire.
** Government Offices for London and the South East of England regions, including Bedfordshire, Essex and Hertfordshire.
Information is not presented by the standard Government Office Regions. This is because for example, the Green Belt for London straddles the London, East of England and South East regional boundaries.

Table 1 of Annex 1 lists in hectares the extent of green belt land in each local authority. Table 2 shows the areas for individual authorities by region and compares the change in area between 2006 and 2007. The annexes are available below:

Annex 1: Area of designated Green Belt land by local authority (table 1) and by region (table 2) (MS Excel, 75 Kb)

Annex 2: Reasons for changes to the extent of Green Belt land in 2007 (MS Excel, 20 Kb)

Changes to the extent of Green Belt between 2006 and 2007

In 2006 the area of green belt land in England was 1,631,800; in 2007 this amounted to 1,635,670. The 2007 figure indicates that there has been a net increase of 3,870 hectares when compared with the 2006 estimates.

It should be noted that although the 2007 figure shows a net increase in the area of green belt land, a significant part of the change is as a result of improved measurement or revisions to previous estimates rather than real changes.

Changes due to new adopted plans (real changes)

Real changes to the extent of green belt land are rare and are the results of new plans being adopted. In the following six cases new plans have been adopted resulting in a net increase of 1050 hectares (Wansbeck designated green belt land for the first time in July 2007).

Real increases

Wansbeck (950 hectares), Blyth Valley (150 hectares) and Bromley and Newcastle-under-Lyme (both 20 hectares). 

Real decreases

Brentwood (60 hectares) and Cambridge (30 hectares).

Changes due to late revisions

In the case of eight authorities the amount of green belt land changed prior to 2007 but estimates were not updated in time for the 2006 estimates of extent of green belt land published in January 2007. These have now been incorporated in the 2007 estimates and have been identified due to the methodological changes to data collection adopted in 2007 (see methodology below). The local authorities concerned have confirmed their most up-to-date figures and these are reported in the tables in Annex 1.  The largest changes were in:

• Leeds, a decrease of 400 hectares, resulting from the adjustment to their green belt boundary as a result of the 2006 inspector's recommendations and the subsequent redraft of their proposal map; and
• Stevenage, a decrease of 100 hectares, due to a combination of the adoption of the Stevenage District Plan Second Review (SDP2R) and a further deletion of green belt land by the court following a partially successful High Court challenge of SDP2R.

Changes due to measurement

Other increases/decreases in green belt land at local authority level were due to improved measuring techniques from digitised data (using geographic information systems as opposed to measurements from paper maps) and the impact of Ordinance Survey's positional accuracy improvement exercise on some local authority's data (see Annex 2 for a list of these authorities).

The largest net increase as a result of improved measurement was in the South West (3,310) mainly arising from Bath and North East Somerset (BANES) correcting errors they found when checking (for accuracy) the inner and outer boundaries of their GIS green belt layer. The apparent increase of green belt in BANES (3,350 hectares) resulted from the redrafting process.

The largest net decreases as a result of improved measurement were in: West Midlands (486 hectares) arising from North Warwickshire (200 hectares) due to a drafting error and Nuneaton and Bedworth (193 hectares) due to improved measuring techniques from digitised data and Yorkshire and the Humber (480 hectares) arising mainly from Leeds (400 hectares) due to reasons given above. 

Notes to Editors

Methodology

1. The Department originally captured its own green belt data from local authority paper records. This activity was then outsourced to a private sector supplier. Considerable effort was required from Departmental staff to quality assure the data provided by the supplier. Given resource constraints and technological advancements by local authorities, many of whom are now able to produce digital data of green belt, it was concluded that a more cost effective approach would be for the Department to build and subsequently maintain a new green belt dataset from the newly available local authority digital data, thus also improving quality assurance.

2. In 2007 local authorities were invited to review their 2006 published green belt estimates via the Department's housing and planning statistics electronic data collection system (Interform). Local authorities then confirmed (or updated) their estimates and these are reported in the tables in Annex 1.

3. Where there was an increase (or decrease) of more than 10 hectares in the green belt estimate between the 2006 and 2007 publications, authorities have been approached to obtain an explanation and this can be found in Annex 2.

4. Areas of Green Belt are derived now from large-scale digitisation of Green Belt boundaries depicted in local (or unitary) development plan maps. 

5. Prior to publication, provisional figures of the extent of Green Belt land were circulated to local authorities for which we intended to show changes for the 2007 estimates. These estimates were confirmed by local authorities and are reported in the tables in Annex 1. 

Green Belt policy

 6. The aims of Green Belt policy are to:

• check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas;
• prevent neighbouring towns from merging into one another;
• assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment;
• preserve the setting and special character of historic towns; and
• assist in urban regeneration, by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land

Further information

7. Information on Green Belt statistics can be obtained from Housing Markets and Analysis Division, Communities and Local Government, 2/A5, Eland House, Bressenden Place, London SW1E 5DU. Tel. 0207 944 5507 Fax. 0207 944 3309.

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