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Lancashire Green Belt Statistics
2007

February 2008

Introduction

Green Belts have been an enduring element of national planning policy and enjoy a high level of public understanding and support. They are characterised by their degree of openness and permanence: once designated, Green Belts are intended to be maintained as far as can be see ahead. They are not inviolable but can only be altered in exceptional circumstances.

The idea of a green belt being used to separate a major metropolis from satellite towns and to act as a locus for agriculture and institutions such as hospitals was popularised by the Garden City movement and by the work of Ebenezer Howard in his landmark book "Garden Cities of Tomorrow". The first official proposal "to provide a reserve supply of public open spaces and of recreational areas and to establish a green belt or girdle of open space" was made by the Greater London Regional Planning Committee in 1935. New provisions for compensation in the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act allowed local authorities to incorporate green belt proposals in their first development plans. The codification of Green Belt policy and its extension to areas other than London came in 1955 with an historic circular inviting local planning authorities to consider the establishment of Green Belts.

Today, Green Belts are established through development plans: structure plans provide the strategic policy context and their general extent and detailed policy and boundaries are set in Local Development Frameworks.

The Extent of Green Belts

Green Belts in England, whose extent is captured in digital (computerised) form from proposal maps in development plans now cover approximately 1,635,670 hectares, about 13% of the land area of England. Their distribution across regions is shown in Table 1.

The general extent of green belt across Lancashire was defined in the late 1970s/early 1980s and the reasons for defining this general extent still endure. Within the Lancashire sub-region about 77,000 hectares are designated green belt, covering a quarter of the total land area and representing 4.7% of the England total. All Lancashire districts have some parts of their area designated as green belt but coverage is particularly large in Chorley, South Ribble and West Lancashire (Table 2).

The 2007 extent of green belts in Lancashire represent a small increase of 30 hectares over that in 2006. However, the whole of this change was the result of improved measurement techniques from digitised data (particularly in Rossendale) rather than real changes to designation.

Map showing the location of Lancashire's green belts Source (External) Development Framework of the (External) Joint Lancashire Structure Plan . Map © Crown Copyright. All rights reserved. Lancashire County Council Licence No. LA 076716 2002. Based on data supplied by Lancashire County Council and the Ordnance Survey.

Purposes of Green Belt

The purposes of the green belts in Lancashire largely follow national guidelines and are as follows:

• To check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas including the Merseyside and Greater Manchester conurbations south of the Lancashire borders.
• To prevent neighbouring town from merging into one another. This is particularly the case in Central and East Lancashire, the Fylde Peninsular and North Lancashire.
• To assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment – particularly along the western and southern edges of the Central Lancashire built-up area.
• To assist in urban regeneration by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land.

(A fifth official purpose of Green Belts – "to preserve the setting and special character of historic towns" – was not applied in Lancashire.)

It might be noted that there is no explicit reference in the above to "nature conservation" or other environmental matters. The term "green" in this case does not have the wider meaning that is commonly attributed to it today, although it is often wrongly thought to do so. Indeed, green belt land can often be of variable quality and may include previously developed land and other degraded sites in need of enhancement. In many instances also, the area designated as "Green Belt" is not a circular belt as the name implies but something else such as green wedges – areas of protected land that extends into the urban area or which simply separate closely adjoining but distinct urban areas, or even "green lungs" – areas entirely surrounded by development.

The Use of Land in Green Belts

Once Green Belts have been defined, the use of land in them has a positive role to play in fulfilling the following objectives:

• To provide opportunities for access to the open countryside for the urban population;
• To provide opportunities for outdoor sport and outdoor recreation near urban areas;
• To retain attractive landscapes, and enhance landscapes, near to where people live;
• To improve damaged and derelict land around towns;
• To secure nature conservation interest; and
• To retain land in agriculture, forestry and related uses.

The extent to which the use of land fulfils these objectives is, however, not itself a material factor in the inclusion of land within a Green Belt, or its continued protection. The purposes of including land in Green Belts, as given above, are of paramount importance to their continued protection and take precedence over the land use objectives.

Photograph taken from Lever Gardens, Rivington, and showing a panoramic view across the West Lancashire plain

Green belt designations in public land use planning has been in use for over 50 years and by general consensus the policy has achieved many of its original aims. It has played a key role in checking the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas and in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment. Without the clarity of green belts, the benefits of containment would have been much harder to achieve. Indirectly they have ensured the retention of valued open space for recreation and assisted in preserving the intrinsic character of the English countryside. Additionally, over the past two decades, in conjunction with policies to encourage the use of underused and "brownfield" land in urban areas, green belt policy has been a significant driver of regeneration and urban renaissance.

However, green belts are a very blunt policy instrument and given the myriad of development pressures facing many parts of Britain from infrastructure, business and housing needs, there are periodic calls for the introduction of greater flexibility. One such was the recent (External) Barker Review of Land Use Planning commissioned by the Treasury and focusing on the link between planning and economic growth. Whilst accepting that the principles of green belt policy remain valid, the Barker report has suggested that more construction should be allowed on green belt boundaries around cities. Such developments, near urban centres and close to existing transport nodes and other public facilities could, it is argued, be the most cost effective way of accommodating development needs in a sustainable fashion. It would potentially reduce the pollution and energy costs caused by commuters who live outside the urban areas "jumping" the green belt to get to work. The report suggests that land in such areas can be developed with the least likely environmental or wider social impact and that it is often low value agricultural land with little landscape quality and limited public access. At the same time, says the report, measures should be taken to enhance the quality of green belt landscapes and consideration should be given to how best to protect and enhance green space in the towns and cities themselves and that the merits of different modes of protecting valued open space, including the idea of "green wedges should be reviewed.

Detailed Information on Green Belt Boundaries

Please note that queries regarding the detailed definition of green belt boundaries, "inset settlements" and other local planning issues surrounding such designations should be directed to the local district and unitary planning authorities concerned. Go here for links to the websites of the 14 Lancashire authorities.

This page was compiled by Peter Kivell .

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