Building 1.5 million new houses may be great for the economy, but it is an environmental catastrophe!

Where is the balance between economic and environmental policies? The new Government has pledged to build 300,000 new homes a year over the next five years. The reason behind this is to meet the growing demand for houses due to:

·?????? the growth in population.

·?????? the purchase of houses to go into pension funds.

·?????? second or holiday homes.

·?????? more people living on their own in houses with 3 and 4 bedrooms.

·?????? immigration into the UK.

House building is no doubt one of the key activities which underpins the economy, so therefore the growth in house building will support the Government’s fiscal policies.

But the impact of construction on the environment is catastrophic:

1.????? Destruction of natural habitat, ecology and wetland.

2.????? Removal of trees and hedges and the subsequent loss of carbon sequestration.

3.????? The striping of top soil which allows the oxidation of carbon and its release into the atmosphere, increasing global warming.

4.????? The cost of carbon emissions through the manufacturing and mining of building materials, along with the process of house building.

5.????? Increased risk of flooding -? When the area size of hard paved areas is increased,? the land mass which can absorb water into groundwater reserves is reduced, increasing water runoff, raising the risk of flooding and making the UK more susceptible to water shortages and/or drought.

Whilst this is all bad enough, the issue escalates with the additional building of new infrastructure to support those homes: Roads, Schools, Hospitals, Medical Centres, Retail and Leisure Areas, which all have their own environmental impacts.

The average new house covers 333.5 m2 which equates to a land mass of 50,025 hectares (ha) needed to build 1.5million new homes without the associated infrastructure.

There is nearly 25 million ha of land mass in this country, of which circa 17.5 million ha is farmable.? So, the land consumed by house building equates to 0.003% of farmable land being lost, and whilst this may not seem a lot, as house building is an ongoing process, it doesn’t stop there – the losses will continue as long as we keep building houses.

Governmental Policy has forgotten “land isn’t being made anymore” – it is not limitless and once that land is under concrete and tarmac it is gone forever.

Then there are things that have not been identified being:

·?????? Carbon sequestration loss - One hectare of farm land stores between 20-160 tonnes of carbon.? If we assume that an average ha of farmland stores approximately 70 tonnes of carbon, that would mean 3.5 million tonnes of carbon will be oxidized into the atmosphere from the soil, through the construction processes, and that is just from stripping the soil, this is before the destruction of trees, hedges and wetland areas are added into this equation.

·?????? The average hectare of land left as grassland will sequest, or capture, circa 4 tonnes of carbon per ha, per annum, out of the atmosphere.? This will amount to 200,000 tonnes of carbon taken out of the atmosphere per annum if the 50,025 ha land wasn’t developed. This means that at least 200,000 trees need to be planted per annum, to compensate for losing land and the valuable contribution it makes to sequesting carbon through the soil.

From a carbon sequestration prospective building houses on farm land is not sustainable, but to make matters worse the Environmental Act 2021 does not go anywhere near far enough to hold Developers and Construction Companies accountable.? They are allowed to abdicate the responsibility of showing a 10% improvement of Bio-diversity Net Gain on a site that is being developed by allowing credits to be bought from farms that are nowhere near the development site itself. These credits and subsequent tree planting are increasing the amount of agricultural land being taken out of the food production process and thus compounding the negative affect on the food supply chain and the environment.

To be sustainable, the Government needs to rethink its house building strategy on green belt farm land and instead its policy needs to look inward into the existing towns and cities to develop brown belt land and build upwards into apartment blocks instead of outwards into the countryside.

Whilst the process of redeveloping brown belt sites is more expensive, it is a strategy that the Government must implement, otherwise as a Nation we are going to lose the opportunity to retain our food supply chain security and in today’s world of global political uncertainty that food security is imperative.

As a nation we must protect our food security and natural environment.