SHADOW Chancellor Ed Balls has urged councils to work together to solve the housing crisis in Oxford and protect the Green Belt.

Mr Balls, who visited the city on Thursday to speak at Oxford University Labour Club and Keble College, said his party wanted to build more affordable homes.

But he told the Oxford Mail the priority should be to build on brownfield sites, rather than Green Belt land, which he said a future Labour government would protect.

Mr Balls said: “We need to make sure that councils like Oxford, where there is a real need for more homes, are not continually blocked by other councils that refuse to pull their weight.

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“If we are going to have more affordable homes where people want them, on brownfield land but also protecting the Green Belt, we need councils to work together and to co-operate.”

A report from the Centre for Cities thinktank , released at the end of last month, said Oxford was the least affordable city in the country and that building 9,500 homes on the Green Belt might be the only solution to the housing shortage at the heart of the problem.

The city council has singled out land in Islip, South Hinksey, Radley and Culham as suitable for development, but all the sites lie outside its control, meaning development would require approval from neighbouring district councils.

Mr Balls said he wanted councils to prioritise building on brownfield sites. He added: “We believe protecting the Green Belt is really important in terms of protecting valuable countryside but also allowing communities to keep their integrity, rather than spreading all over the place.

“We think that a sensible approach to planning reform, with a presumption in the planning system to look at brownfield sites, can allow us to build the affordable homes we need and keep and protect the Green Belt.”

Oxford City Council’s deputy leader, Ed Turner, said: “We welcome Labour’s ‘right to grow’ for places like Oxford, and of course need to talk to our neighbouring authorities about how to make this happen. We do so practically every week.

“We welcome the proposals in the Lyons review to ensure that councils can’t duck their obligation to meet housing need.”

The Campaign to Protect Rural England’s Oxfordshire director, Helen Marshall, said: “CPRE Oxfordshire welcomes yesterday’s announcement by Ed Balls that a future Labour government will protect the Green Belt and prioritise brownfield sites.

“However, just saying they are going to protect the Green Belt doesn’t necessarily make it so – after all, the current government also says it is going to protect the Green Belt.”

 

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