Thursday 21 April 2011

That's four times as much land as is used for homes and gardens...

From the DCLG:

The latest National Statistics on the estimates of the area of designated Green Belt land in local authorities in England were released under the auspices of the UK Statistics Authority on 15 April 2011. Key points from this latest release are:

The area of designated Green Belt land in England at 31st March 2011 was estimated at 1,639,540 hectares, about 13 per cent of the land area of England...


Add on the 'New Forest National Parks' etc and that's about 14 per cent. For comparison, homes and gardens take up about 3.5 per cent of the UK by surface area and farmland/forests (incl. Hallowed Green Belt) take up nearly 90 per cent.

11 comments:

Old BE said...

AND! Roads and railways take up less than 1% which is always worth remembering when people shriek about paving paradise.

Mark Wadsworth said...

BE, actually roads, railways etc are about 2%; and total developed land is about 10%.

Old BE said...

Ah, maybe I was remembering 1% for trunk roads or something.

Either way, we have not run out of space yet.

Mark Wadsworth said...

BE, being entirely fair, we could guesstimate 1% for trunk roads and 1% for residential streets, so housing estates cover 4.5% by surface area, still only a third of The Hallowed Green Belt.

Sobers said...

And this supports your argument that housing is zero-sum, and me owning a particular house stops you from owning a similar one how precisely?

Looks to me as if there's more than enough land for everyone to have a reasonably priced house if only the government would let people build them........no need for LVT whatsoever, problem solved.

Mark Wadsworth said...

S, come off it.

a) As you know perfectly well there's no point building houses out in the middle of nowhere, they are best built in or around existing towns and cities where there are jobs etc, and there is by definition a restricted amount of such land.

b) If you liberalise planning laws, then yes, at the very margin house prices might drop but there will still be big differences between a marginal plot and land in the centre of towns and cities, near the stations, with a nice view etc (so the rationale for LVT still holds).

c) If you liberalise planning laws, then all things being equal, the total rental value of UK land goes UP (even though house prices at the margin go DOWN), therefore tax base for LVT goes UP and therefore the % rate we'd need to raise £x goes DOWN.

d) Thus with or without planning restrictions, all the arguments for replacing income tax with Land Value Tax still hold.

e) And those people who buy a house at the margin will only pay very little LVT.

Jer said...

This is interesting and tangentionally relevant:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/8464483/The-other-housing-market-where-house-prices-have-regressed-60pc.html

Mark Wadsworth said...

J, indeedy. I've linked to that in a subsequent post.

neil craig said...

The term "belt" certainly implies a relatively small area constraining larger urban areas bursting out of their confines.

Once again words being used to cover an actuality opposite to their true meaning. Endemic to politics.

Bayard said...

"Add on the 'New Forest National Parks'"

Why? I live in a national park and it's nothing like a green belt, planning wise.

Tim Almond said...

neil craig,

Oxford's Greenbelt is 9 times larger than the city. It's why the Bodleian is building a book storage facility on the outskirts of Swindon.