Labour's 'grey belt' plans could lead to isolated estates, says top architect

Labour's plans to boost housebuilding by allowing the construction of thousands of homes on areas of green belt land could have the unintended consequence of producing isolated communities, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has warned.

- Rachel Hall

Muyiwa Oki said the government should avoid making the mistakes of the past, which had seen housing estates built without proper access to transport, schools or shops. This would require more architects and design experts to be hired and retained in local authority planning departments, he added.

In a shake-up of planning rules announced on Tuesday, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, Angela Rayner, said councils would be asked to review local green belt land and identify so-called "grey belt" sites. Grey belt sites include spaces within the green belt that have been deemed as not contributing to it-for example, sites next to roads or in former petrol stations or car parks.

Rayner also announced that she would get rid of the stipulation for new developments to be "beautiful", which Oki said architects welcomed, as it had proved to be a "barrier to quality development".

He said: "It can cause confusion because something that's beautiful to someone else can be not beautiful to another person.

"That's why we want to focus on the language of high quality and embed that into the national planning policy framework.