This week I led a Parliamentary debate on the definition and application of grey belt land. When Ministers first introduced the concept of grey belt, the Secretary of State, Angela Rayner, said it would be disused car parks, garages and wasteland, and that agricultural land would remain protected. However, there are several reasons to be concerned about how far the Government's actual definition has drifted and what this will mean for our countryside.

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), published in December 2024, defines grey belt not as wasteland but as any green belt land that fails to 'strongly' contribute to three of the green belt's five original purposes, namely checking urban sprawl, preventing towns merging and preserving the settings of historic towns. The two other purposes, safeguarding the countryside from encroachment and assisting urban regeneration, are not part of that test. I asked for the debate this week to explore whether these criteria are in fact confined to disused car parks and garages or, as I suspect, they would capture a significant portion of agricultural land simply because this land is not immediately adjacent to a town or city.

There are reasons to believe that much of what is currently green belt will end up redesignated grey belt, since the bar to retain green belt protection has now been set deliberately high. I believe that the land that keeps its green belt status will overwhelmingly be right on the edge of towns and cities, as these are the only places where the three surviving criteria of green belt apply. Everything further out (which in Kenilworth and Southam means agricultural land around villages) becomes more vulnerable, not less.

Worse still, under the new rules villages in the green belt have much less protection. In our constituency, Southam has a population of around 9,200. In comparison, Wellesbourne has a slightly smaller population of around 7,600. Yet under the Government's definition of grey belt Southam can argue its surrounding green belt should stay protected. Wellesbourne, however, classified as a village rather than an urban area, cannot make the same case. The practical effect means more development pressure on villages, roads and schools that serve them, without the safeguards afforded to towns that may only be slightly larger.

Ministers have said that grey belt status alone doesn't guarantee development; councils must also demonstrate an unmet housing need. But with many authorities unable to show a five-year land supply, partly because of recently raised targets, that test will rarely be a serious obstacle. The Government has argued that development must be in a 'sustainable location'. Yet if grey belt land is comprised mostly of countryside away from settlements, then this is precisely where transport links, schools and GP surgeries tend to be the sparsest and sustainability, if it has real meaning, will be hardest to demonstrate. I fear that, if the Government is to succeed in building more houses on grey belt as it intends, it will not allow sustainability to be an obstacle.

Ministers may cite the NPPF safeguard that grey belt development must not 'fundamentally undermine' the remaining purposes of the green belt across an entire local plan area. However, in practice, it is very hard to argue that a single site undermines the green belt across an entire plan area the size of South Warwickshire – which is precisely why I asked the Minister whether cumulative impact across multiple sites will be considered, not just each application in

isolation. He directed me to the South Warwickshire Local Plan, which will release 1.54% of Stratford-upon-Avon and 6.99% of Warwick, as evidence that the process is plan-led and cumulative impact is already accounted for. But this answers a different question of how much land a council chooses to release from the green belt entirely, not whether some of the geeen belt might be reclassified as grey belt. Those are separate judgments, and I remain unconvinced that the second is being tested with anything like the same rigour as the first.

None of what Parliamentary colleagues and I raised in the Chamber on Tuesday sits in isolation from the Government's wider housing strategy. Coventry's housing target has been cut by 50% whilst Warwick District's has risen by 65%. Stratford District's has nearly doubled. That is not a coincidence, but a transfer of housing pressure from cities with brownfield capacity onto rural areas that have already absorbed much development in recent years.

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Independent analysis shows that grey belt likely encompasses significantly more land than Ministers originally described, and that its effect on our countryside will be significant and irreversible. I will continue to challenge Ministers on this, because a policy sold as utilising disused land should not become the mechanism by which our villages absorb housing pressure nearby cities are better placed to take.