"It’s clear here that the real issue we’re facing is a lack of understanding around just what green belt building entails and this is no doubt the reason why it faces such a high level of objection"
- Mitchell Fasanya - Searchland
New research from Searchland has found that 35% of NIMBYs would rather see an increase in the number of households recorded as homeless, instead of utilising the green belt to help address the housing crisis.
The development site sourcing specialists surveyed over 1,000 homeowners on their understanding of the green belt and their feelings towards utilising it to help address the current housing crisis.
The results found that as many as 34% had an incorrect understanding of what the green belt actually is, with 26% believing it referred to the countryside as a whole, while others thought it referred specifically to meadows, woodland or agricultural land.
The green belt - an area of undeveloped land between towns and cities to prevent urban sprawl - covers an estimated 1.637m hectares across England alone. This equates to around 13% of the nation’s total land area. In contrast, just 9% of the nation’s land area is classified as ‘built up’.
Despite this, 45% of those surveyed by Searchland believed that developed land covered a larger area than the green belt.
What’s more, just 18% were aware that there are many areas of green belt land that have been wrongly classified, with just 24% supporting green belt housebuilding.
However, 70% were aware that there are areas of green belt land that have been used for housing supply already.
Housing supply and how to address the current housing crisis is a burning issue and one that the government has so far failed to address. Across the UK there are as many as 271,000 households currently recorded as homeless, which demonstrates how desperately we need more homes.
But shockingly, of those homeowners surveyed by Searchland, as many as 35% stated that they would rather see this number increase to avoid building on the green belt.
65% were open to the idea of utilising a tiny proportion of the green belt to help address the current housing crisis.
Co-founder and CEO of Searchland, Mitchell Fasanya, commented: “Green belt building is a very contentious issue and one that often gets overlooked by the government due to the pressure brought by NIMBYism. But to think that 35% of homeowners would rather see an increase in the number of households recorded as homeless in order to avoid green belt building is simply shocking, to say the least.
"However, it’s clear here that the real issue we’re facing is a lack of understanding around just what green belt building entails and this is no doubt the reason why it faces such a high level of objection.
"This is one of the biggest obstacles facing developers today when considering the green belt and it’s important that we put as much resource into educating local communities as we do with the other areas of housing development.”
