The green belt is “not sacred” and should be built on to allow more affordable housing, a think tank has said. Policy Exchange said even the term itself is misleading and the Government should tackle the “myth” that land is a scarce resource in England. It said the debate around the green belt should be conducted in a “less emotional” tone and local communities should be given more power to decide where homes are built. Policy Exchange said most people were unaware that 90 per cent of England is undeveloped. Its chief economist Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich, writing in Total Politics magazine, said: “Why is there such a gap between perception and reality? Perhaps because people have been told again and again that open land is disappearing. England has no lack of open space. Even if urban areas were expanded by 10 per cent this could be achieved by using less than one per cent of the total land mass. That would still leave 89 per cent of the country untouched by development.”

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22 August 2008