< p>There was an article in the FT recently which stated that housebuilding on protected greenbelt land has risen sharply in the past five years. The key drivers for this were cited as public bodies selling off land to boost their coffers, as well as the demand for new homes.

The topic is an emotive one, both for environmental reasons as well as local residents not wanting building work to take place near their homes. But I am a strong advocate for building on the green belt and my reasons are five-fold.

Firstly, figures from the UK National Ecosystem Assessment show that just 6.8% per cent of the UK’s land area is classified as urban, which includes rural development and roads. Put another way, this means more than 93% of the UK is not built upon. (Built upon is defined as buildings, roads, railways, playgrounds and car parks - basically anything that is concreted over.)

In 2013/14, the extent of the designated green belt was around 13% of the land area of England, nearly double that of the UK’s built upon areas. Indeed, green belt land area has increased since the statistics were first compiled in 1997. Even if all of the green belt land were built upon (and I’m not suggesting this should or is likely to happen), less than a quarter of the UK would be classified as built up, still leaving significant green spaces.

Secondly, a lot of green belt land isn’t either green or pleasant. Contrary to popular belief, green belt land is there to stop cities from merging into one another, rather than to protect areas of natural significance or that host rare wildlife or ecosystems. I am not suggesting we bulldoze areas of outstanding natural beauty in a bid to build more homes. Appropriate areas of green belt such as scrub land, would need to be identified as suitable and then built upon.

Thirdly, protecting the green belt is contrary to the need to build more houses. In 2013, an LSE University study found that by pushing out the green belt by one mile, space would be freed up for more than a million properties, and while policy changes may not have to be as drastic as that, it’s certainly food for thought. We need more selective building on green belt land to address this undersupply urgently. As more households are created through life events such as divorce or people increasingly choosing to live alone, the housing situation will only worsen.

Fourthly, houses must be built where there is demand. There’s no point building houses where no one wants to live, in places where jobs are scarce and infrastructure isn’t there to support a new community. The key is to build where there are jobs and close to infrastructure.

Fifth, “it’s the economy, stupid”. By inhibiting the expansion of cities in refusing to build on the greenbelt we aren’t doing the economy any favours. Expansion and housebuilding are natural signs that the economy is booming. In Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield in particular, the greenbelt is large. Given the new government’s commitment to creating Northern powerhouses, homes will have to be built to accommodate those who move to fill the new jobs that will be created. At some point, this land will need to house these workers.

Of course, building on the green belt is only part of the solution to boost housing supply and must be part of a package of measures that are taken, including encouraging institutional investors into the housebuilding market (whether for rent or sale); and encouraging banks to lend more to experienced, regional housebuilders, who can fill the gaps that the larger housebuilders cannot.

If a new generation of first time buyers stand any chance of getting onto the housing ladder, then we have to overcome our inherent NIMBY-ism and objections on environmental grounds, in order to build on green belt sites.