Hanham Green Belt

The Batch in Hanham, South Gloucestershire With Parliament’s summer recess fast approaching, Westminster is expected to publish its final, comprehensively rewritten National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) as early as next week. Following a winter consultation period that concluded in March, this update represents the most radical structural and policy shake-up to English planning in over a decade. For communities like Hanham—where the precious buffer of the Green Belt prevents urban sprawl...

As members of Hanham District Green Belt Conservation Society, we are all too familiar with the relentless pressure to build over our local fields. Developers routinely eye up our precious green spaces, claiming they are the "easiest" way to meet South Gloucestershire’s housing targets. Meanwhile, complex brownfield sites right on our doorstep sit empty. A prime example is the former Kleeneze factory site off Anstey’s Road. Purchased by the government housing agency Homes England in 2020,...

The Batch in Hanham, South Gloucestershire There is a painful irony at the heart of Britain's housing crisis, and it is one that residents of Hanham understand better than most. Across the country, the major housebuilders are becoming increasingly choosy about the development sites they are willing to pursue. Faced with squeezed profit margins, rising build costs, and a planning system choked with delay, the giants of UK residential development — among them Barratt Redrow, Persimmon, Taylor...