Gardner Leader

Garden Grabbing

Decentralisation Minister Greg Clark is to give local councils immediate powers to prevent  the practice of ''garden grabbing”, which has seen green and leafy suburbs concreted over as developers cram ever more houses into suburban plots.

According to the Communities and Local Government Department, the number of houses being built on gardens rose from one in 10 to a quarter of new properties between 1997 and 2008.

Current planning law defines gardens as brown field sites. Due to housing targets for brown field sites, developers are able to acquire houses with large gardens and put in planning applications. Even if local people and the local council object and deny planning permission, developers can appeal to planning inspectors who approve the plans as it helps them to meet their "new housing" and "building on brown field site" targets.

Often, one or two houses with large gardens are purchased by developers and are converted into many new flats and houses, covering almost the entire footprint with tarmac and concrete, seriously reducing the amount of green space for a much enlarged population.

Removal of gardens from the definition of being "brown field" site developments, which effectively puts gardens in the same category as derelict factories and old railway sidings, would no longer be (almost) automatically approved by planning inspectors. The decision would revert to local authorities who could make considered decisions based on local needs and conditions.

Many local authorities wish to manage the types and ranges of housing to maintain the character of areas and to recognise people's need for access to green space, but this was being denied due to national interpretation of planning rules.

The problem is particularly acute in places including Guildford, Croydon, Southampton and the New Forest in the South East, Poole and Dorset in the South West, Solihull in the Midlands, Leeds, Sheffield and Wakefield in Yorkshire, South Tyneside in the North East and Norwich in Norfolk.

It is worth noting that this will not affect people who want to build extensions on their homes.

The change, which was promised in both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat manifestos ahead of the general election, is the latest by the Government to implement coalition pledges to hand more power to local communities and has been welcomed by garden and wildlife organisations.

Conservative MP and environmental campaigner Zac Goldsmith made the point: "If you lump gardens and wasteland in the same category, developers will always go for gardens because it's easier and cheaper.”

"We are not saying there shouldn't be development, there are other alternatives. There are a lot of empty homes.”

"We want to protect gardens so that instead of being top of the list for developers, they are at the bottom."

There will also be an abolition of minimum targets for the amount of housing in a given area, which has contributed to a perceived over-development. Under current targets, at least thirty homes need to be built on every hectare of developed land, making it very difficult for large developers to get planning permission for bigger homes and gardens. The rules state that at least 25% of homes in new luxury housing developments must be “affordable”, which means that a proposed development fails to get approval unless a block of budget flats is also built.

It is hoped that the abolition of density targets will bring an end to cluttering, badly conceived flats and homes that are too small. The danger, however, is that the combination of these decisions could result in more green field land being developed – “if it’s garden grabbing out, then it may be countryside grabbing in”, the Planning Officers Society has said.

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