The Struggle for Housing Land: A case of confused interests

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Abstract
The issue of housing land has always been central to town and country planning and since the introduction of comprehensive land-use planning, allocating land for residential development has been a major planning function for local authorities. Furthermore, this allocation process has frequently become the focus for overt political struggles between different groups at local fora, such as public local inquiries into planning applications and examinations in public of structure plans. Less well documented though are the political struggles at the national level over this planning issue. Yet over the past few years central government policy on housing land allocation has taken an important new direction. With the election of a Conservative government in 1979, the planning system has come under renewed scrutiny. The result has been a series of Department of the Environment circulars, other policy statements and environmental planning initiatives. Associated with this has been an active political debate. The recent press coverage of the draft green belt circular (eg The Sunday Times 9th October 1983 and The Guardian 5th and 12th August 1983) is a more public example of the continuing stream of articles on this subject in trade, professional and other pressure group journals.

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