Legal and General have asked for a "critical reassessment" of green belt land, claiming that releasing only 1% of green belt land will free up enough land to build one million new homes.
It is well publicised that there is a shortage of available housing in the UK, and Legal and General has said that either green belt land is built on or the housing shortage will continue.
Their request comes as the government prepare to publish a white paper on housing, which has already been delayed three times. It is expected that the paper will propose that planning restrictions are relaxed to allow more homes to be built.
Legal and General chief executive Nigel Wilson told the BBC: "The green belt has doubled in size in the last 20 years, it is 4 million acres now. We've got to have a much greater critical assessment on what is and what isn't green belt. Nobody wants to build on the Chilterns, or the Malvern's or the beautiful parts of Britain, but there are lots of areas that have been designated green belt which are really brown field sites and we absolutely have to build on more brown field sites."
However, Shaun Spiers, chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said: "We are an incredibly crowded country, the most populous big country in Europe, and [green belt] is the countryside nearest to where people live. It stops towns merging into each other, it is an incredibly valued resource. There is loads of land with planning permission in the country already. There is enough brown field land to build over a million homes. We don't need to be building on the green belt to solve the housing crisis."
However, planners and housebuilders are under pressure to help the government to deliver on their target of building one million new homes by 2020. The question is; how far will the government go in order to meet their target?
