The rapid expansion in housing and commercial developments around our cities, small towns and villages across Cymru / Wales over the last 50 years. Many of these developments often have little provision for public transport or alternative ways for potential residents to get around beyond using their cars beyond unfulfilled and largely undelivered promises.
What has also happened is the rapid loss of green spaces in and around our urban and not so urban areas and a largely unthought out expansion of our urban centres.
One thing that Wales lacks, aside from a serious well though out integrated housing structure plan, and a modern planning system and a realistic vision or plan for strategically developing our housing for the future, is green belt.
There is a clear need for formal legally protected green belt, around Cardiff (including the Northern meadows), Newport, Cwmbran and Caerphilly along with our small towns in Monmouthshire: Abergavenny, Chepstow and Monmouth and elsewhere in Cymru / Wales.
The failure to create Green belt across all of our country, to fringe our urban areas, to help focus out of town and fringe of town developments, and to protect green spaces around, between and within some of our urban areas, has had significant consequences when it comes to urban growth.
Green belt, if respected is still a useful planning tool, originally introduced for London in 1938, it was rolled out to England as a whole by a government circular in 1955 but interestingly enough it was only enough never rolled out here in Cymru / Wales. The original concept was to allow local councils to designate green belts when they wanted to restrict, control or shape urban growth.
The idea has worked and it has worked well, as by 2007, Green belt covered something like 13% of England (about one-and-a-half million hectares) despite the best efforts of previous Conservative, New Labour and Conservative–Liberal Democrat Governments it is still remains relatively well protected by normal planning controls against "inappropriate development".
It is worth noting that there is no designated green belt in Cymru / Wales - save for one patch of notional green belt (actually described as a Green wedge) that lies between Cardiff and Newport. Scotland has seven and Northern Ireland has thirty - each has its own policy guidance.
This absence of green belt in Wales perhaps explains much - it has certainly contributed to urban sprawl and significant out of town and edge of town development - something that has done little to help our communities, economically or socially especially over the last 30 years.
The preservation of green spaces aside, comes down to planning permission (and ultimately our planning process), which can be a touchy subject in itself, especially when a development (whether for commercial, housing or energy development) is controversial or the final decision is made against the wishes of local people.
In Cymru / Wales we face the same problem across all of our country, be it around Wrecsam, Carmarthen, northern Cardiff, Swansea of any of our smaller towns and villages.
More locally, a number of these housing developments, which have done (and will do) some pretty serious damage to our environment have come without any necessary improvements in infrastructure e.g new railway stations with reasonably priced (or even free), adequate and secure park and ride facilities at Caerleon (closed as a result of the Beeching cuts in 1962, in the UDP since 1984) not to mention proposed stations at Llanwern, Magor, Somerton and Newport West.
In our south east, along the coastal belt and in and around Newport and Torfaen (not to mention around Cardiff and Caerphilly) and across Monmouthshire the last thirty five years has seen a spectacular growth in the amount of housing, a significant percentage of which has never been aimed to fulfil local housing needs, sustainably or otherwise.
As a result the infrastructure along the coastal belt between Chepstow, Caldicot, Rogiet and Magor struggles to cope with existing developments and this is well before the projected expansion of housing on and around the former Llanwern site (where the proposed railway station was recently cancelled) really kicks in.
Northern Newport has been linked to the south Cwmbran - something that has brought little material benefit to the residents of either urban area but has contributed much to traffic congestion. Cwmbran has been linked to Sebastopol bringing scant real benefit to local residents. When the housing development is complete - just exactly how much of it will be affordable to local residents remains to be seen?
The removal of the Severn Bridge tolls resulted (as expected) in a bump in house prices as people living in and around Bristol moved to cash in on cheaper housing over here.
This understandably impacted on both affordable and available housing, developers will no doubt pitch their developments accordingly to cash in on perceived higher wages in the Bristol area and perceived cheaper housing over here (and no doubt our local authorities will fall over themselves to accommodate the developers wishes regardless how local people feel).
The then, National Assembly (now Senedd) should have known better and acted accordingly, the institution when established was supposed to have sustainability enshrined in its actions, but, at times you really have to wonder, especially when it comes to the impact of some of the proposed developments on our communities, whether it does or not.
We need to develop and protect our own green belt around and within our urban communities – because once developed (or overdeveloped) it’s gone for good. We need to bin the fundamentally flawed UDP process and make our local government structure fit for the 21st century rather than the 19th century and accommodate re realities of devolved government.
It should be pretty clear by now to even the most dispassionate of observers that in Wales, we lack a coherent national strategic development plan for Wales judging by the half-baked way local unitary development plans have been put together over the years.
The problem caused by a lack of protection to our Green spaces is aggravated by the fact that while one generation of elected officials (and council officers) envisages as a green wedge, green lane, etc as a social necessity they are often seen by following generations of elected officials (and council officers) as either prime land for development or a nice little earner to help balance out the books.
This means that there is a real lack of stability and a lack of a sustainable long term vision for many of our urban areas and impacts on our quality of life.
The Senedd needs to grow up and act like the Welsh Parliament it has become - it should take the long view and legislate to create and protect Green belt land with full legal and planning protections in Cymru/ Wales.
This might go some way to calming things down when it comes to development planning and might introduce a more long-term sustainable democratic element into the process.
This is something that could be accomplished by creating Welsh Green belt land, as part of the process we also need an urgent and open debate into the planning process in Wales - something that has been long overdue.
Successive Westminster government’s (in England) talked about getting planning officers "off people's backs" with a relaxation of planning rules. When they talked about ‘people’ they meant developers. As a result of the pandemic, the post Brexit Westminster ministers have yet to take the much trumpeted and much promised axe to red tape and planning rules (in England) in an attempt to boost house building and revive the economy.
Not wanting to be left out (and also perhaps bereft of any fresh ideas), a few years ago Carwyn’s Labour in Wales Government in Cardiff also pursued major changes to planning rules in Wales aiming to ‘tilt the balance in favour of economic growth over the environment and social factors’.
That decision was in my opinion aimed quite specifically at overturning those few occasions when our Local Authorities have rejected developments (often at the behest of local residents) rather than putting economic needs ahead of economic and environmental benefits and will do little for sustainable, flood free development to deal with local housing needs let alone preserve our green spaces.
It explains much of the housing overdevelopment in various parts of our country and it does not deliver for our hard pressed communities or our country.
We need to look at championing the development of new homes in small-scale housing developments in both rural and urban Wales on ‘exception sites’, where land plots, not covered by general planning permission, will be capped at an affordable price designed to benefit those in local housing need with family and work ties to the area, and whose sale will be conditional on these houses continuing in local ownership in perpetuity.
What’s left of our social housing stock that remains under the control of the housing associations needs to remain intact in order to meet the demand for homes.
Along with developing social housing stock there is a need to introduce a more rigorous system in the allocation of social housing to give priority to those in local housing need.
Part of the problem is that our planning system, along with our almost nineteenth century local government setup is not designed to coexist with devolution or for that matter to deliver planning decisions with real and lasting benefits for local people and local communities.
There is a real need for root and branch reform and reorganisation of our planning system; something the Welsh Government has failed to deliver with tinkering and tweaks to existing out-dated legislation rather than and real reform.
Our current planning system remains far too focused on railroading through large housing / commercial developments, that often bring little real benefits for local people and local communities and often fail to resolve real and pressing local housing needs.
We need a fundamental change in planning culture to encourage appropriate and sustainable smaller scale housing developments, which are based on good design and actively promote energy efficiency and good environmental standards and that puts our communities first.
Now this is something we are never going to get any of this from a Labour in Wales government, in Cardiff, or a Labour in Westminster government at the other end of the M4. It’s time to change the way that our communities are run and to make the aims and objectives of Welsh government’s more responsive to our communities, and our country’s needs and concerns, rather than the needs and concerns of the Labour Party.
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