The West Midlands Regional Assembly has just started a two-month consultation period on the housing needs of the region. With numbers of houses required dramatically increased since the last report five years ago.
Local environment campaigners are questioning the need and fear that green belt will be gobbled up by the new proposals.
Maggie Throup, who has campaigned avidly to protect the green belt around Solihull commented: “The new report suggests an increase in housing needs of 19 per cent in Solihull, that is an extra 18,000 houses needing to be built. Solihull is already a bursting point when it comes to new builds and I fear this will push the developers to our precious green belt.
“With our gardens currently being classified as brownfield sites, the over-densification in our town is already a problem. We need to look at ways of encouraging developers to use more true brownfield sites before more of our gardens and green belt are irreversibly destroyed.”
Conservatives in the West Midlands are backing a national campaign to stop Labour’s Garden Grab.
Anyone wishing to sign the online petition can click conservatives.com/gardens
Pictured above: Maggie Throup, Caroline Spelman MP and a supporter of our campaign.
