Please be assured that I am firmly in favour of protecting the wider natural environment here in my constituency of East Grinstead and Uckfield, and across our country for the benefit of future generations. It is so important we do work to conserve our rural heritage, our cherished landscapes, our green spaces, ancient woodlands and working farms. While we need to build -and I agree we do need more houses in our local towns and villages – we must build the right houses in the right places which will allow the next generation to start building their lives. I don’t believe roundly concreting over the countryside when many young people want or, indeed, need to live in cities like London or Brighton for work, is the answer; it simply creates more long commutes and extortionate travel costs, more unwanted dormitory developments, more pollution and more unconnected communities. However, we do need to tackle the adversarial nature of development and facilitate home ownership for more people, particularly our younger generation, so nobody feels locked out from the opportunity to have a family home that many of us had.
We are all aware pressure on housing is continuing to grow as this Labour Government fails to control immigration. For example, nearly 50% of London’s social housing is occupied by those born outside the United Kingdom. At the same time, under Sadiq Khan in London, new housing starts have slumped by 30 per cent in the last twelve months. This is completely unacceptable and means too many of our young people simply can’t find a place to live or, if they can, their rents are extortionate, locking them out of work and housing in our capital city.
The previous Conservative Government ordered a review of Sadiq Khan’s policies in London that were holding back the ability to develop 16,803 acres of industrial or brownfield land, should developers choose to do so. We would rewrite the London Plan to unlock brownfield land for development so more homes can and will be built in London.
However, the 2024 reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework, introducing mandatory local housing targets and a new standard method for calculating local housing need, disproportionately redistributes top-down housing targets onto rural areas from urban areas. For example, under the Government's targets housing numbers have been cut by 11 per cent in London, 38 per cent in Birmingham and 55 per cent in Coventry, whilst increasing it by 106 per cent in New Forest, 199 per cent in North Yorkshire and 487 per cent in Westmorland and Furness. This is particularly concerning given that cities like London have the infrastructure capacity needed to support development unlike our smaller towns and villages. Simply put, the Labour Government’s plan for new homes disproportionately places the responsibility on rural communities and rural environments to reach their target.
The previous Deputy Prime Minister, Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP, and her colleagues in the Government, also stood on a manifesto promising to re-designate some green belt land as “grey belt”. I believe this policy, which was presented as a few disused garage forecourts and wasteland in green belts, is a con. Work conducted by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility showed that as many 500,000 homes could be built on the green belt as a result. I do not welcome this and, more widely, do not welcome this Government’s war on rural England. While I fully support the need to build more housing, it must be done in the right places, and with proper consultation and consent from the communities affected where possible and I do accept there are always trade-offs. No new site is perfect and no community will ever find these challenges easy. Many of us do live in former green fields and one person’s favourite dog walk is another person’s opportunity to see their son or daughter get a home and chance to live a fulfilling life.
It is, however, crucial the planning system respects and protects the natural environment, and I am deeply concerned that the Labour Government has opted to roundly sideline urban housing and prioritise building in more rural areas, including the sacrificing of the Green Belt in many places. We don’t have green belt in our area.
Development on the green belt for those that have it do feel it fully undermines the protection of nature and agriculture, and affects communities who rely on it for leisure, sport and access to the local environment. The Government’s draft reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework go further, doubling down on this approach, weakening green belt protections and reintroducing ‘garden grab’ development.
Since writing about these proposals in depth last July (2025), concerns have continued to be raised by many constituents about the impacts of the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill on the countryside, on biodiversity, on environmental scrutiny and on the protection of British wildlife. Constituents also have voiced deep reservations about provisions that would diminish the influence of local voices and local decisions especially as the natural environment in Sussex—including our ancient woodlands, hedgerows, and protected species—is already under enormous pressure.
Mims Davies MP Statement on Planning and Infrastructure Bill - Nature | Mims Davies
We also need to be very mindful that the South-East of England is now acknowledged to be one of the most water-stressed areas in the UK and we have already seen repeated water outages in recent years. In addition, we have 40% constraints on building in our area due to the South Downs National Park, Ashdown Forest and other Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Regarding developments in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, we need to be absolutely clear these sites are irreplaceable and I believe they should be protected for decades to come. Houses must be built to the highest standards and subject to stringent environmental regulations. Retro fitting should not be an option.
Anyone who cares about our natural world knows that once a habitat is destroyed, such as a long-established woodland, no cheque can bring it back. I have little confidence the Government’s plans for Natural England can successfully mitigate the significant local environmental harms that will ensue through their environmental delivery plans whereby you can destroy nature in one place and ‘offset’ it by restoring or creating a habitat elsewhere. I believe plans should delivered locally, through local or strategic plans, by local people, with local consent. We believe these communities understand their natural environments best, and it is essential their voices remain central.
As things stand, however, both the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Home Builders Federation of developers have said that Labour will miss its pledge of building 1.5 million homes by 2029. It is clear this Government must do more to meet its self-imposed target and I believe this must include choosing to develop brownfield first and seek the swifter redevelopment of brownfield sites, rather than intrude on the greenbelt or greenfield sites.
Like the constituents who have written to me on this subject, I absolutely recognise the benefits of building on brownfield sites and I do want to see more homes built on this previously developed land as doing so helps to deliver new homes while protecting our green spaces, our agricultural land and our countryside. Ripping up the green belt is not the answer, which is why my colleagues and I have called for the swifter redevelopment of brownfield sites. This is not least because, according to CPRE, in a substantial number of local authorities there is enough brownfield land with planning permission to meet the targets set by the Government’s standard method for calculating housing need for at least the next five years. This is something that the Government have failed to explore.
So, I agree the Labour Government must re-think their approach to building on brownfield sites. Instead of removing legal protections for the green belt, brownfield land should be the first priority for development, and the Government focus on making it a more viable and cost-effective option.
I am clear more homes are needed – our young people must have the similar opportunities to get on the housing ladder or start a family that we have had in previous generations, but they must be built in the right places and with local consent, not at the expense of our green spaces. We must build places people actually want to live in. Close to roads, amenities and, crucially, with infrastructure.
I completely agree with my colleague, Kit Malthouse MP, when he said,
'Far too often…villages and towns feel as if planning is something that is done to them. They dread the land promoter showing up to ram some inappropriate planning through. Some of that compromise can be about beauty, and I lament the fact that the design standards were taken out of the NPPF and that that word is not used… People would be more than happy for developers to build villages …if they look beautiful and fit in. Unfortunately, we get the same ersatz development that everybody else gets around the country.'
My colleagues and I will continue to press this Labour Government to rethink their approach by prioritising and supporting building on brownfield. My colleagues and I will continue to defend the green belt and rural communities.
I can assure you the Conservatives will build where homes are needed, work to protect the Green Belt by building on brownfield land, and prioritise hardworking British citizens for housing to build a strong economy. It will be always a challenge to get right but we must accept that and get on with it.
As a Conservative, it is one of my core beliefs that we leave behind a better environmental inheritance for future generations. As such, I am increasingly worried by the hugely negative impact Labour’s renewables infrastructure rollout (supported by the Green Party) is having on our environment – on our farmland, our beautiful and historic landscapes, our peatlands, woodlands and moorlands. We seem to be destroying nature in order to save it as we carpet the land with industrial solar farms and scar it with giant metal windmills.
So, I do share the genuine concerns many people have about the impact large-scale solar and wind farms can have on our rural environment here in the UK. Around the country, communities are seeing large areas of the countryside being handed over to developers, displacing local farmers and making the UK more reliant on imports from major polluters such as China for our energy infrastructure.
Every year, tens of thousands of acres of essential agricultural land are being lost to vast arrays of solar panel installations in open countryside. That is unnecessary.
It cannot be impossible to get this right.
You can read the rest of that statement by clicking on this link:
Mims Davies MP Statement on Industrial Solar and Wind Farms | Mims Davies
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Mims Davies MP Statement on Biodiversity and Rewilding | Mims Davies
Mims Davies MP Statement on the Planning & Infrastructure Bill | Mims Davies
