Land promoter Richborough is working with landowners to get permissions or allocations on around 60 green belt sites – that’s about a third of its pipeline of work. So, with the new Labour government setting out plans in August to make it far easier to release land from the green belt for development, you might expect chief executive Paul Campbell to be little short of jubilant.

Instead, he is worried. “I think the government is serious about tackling the housing crisis and that’s great,” he says, “but there will be consequences if they go through with what has been proposed”.

He is referring not to the overall thrust of the reforms which he, like most in the development sector, warmly welcomes. But, rather, to the specific policy detail regarding what planning contributions green belt sites will have to provide, and how they will be valued. 

“This could all cause massive dislocation in the land market,” he says. “It’s a bit of a problem for housing supply.”

Campbell is raising the fears voiced repeatedly by developer and applicant groups in responses to the government’s consultation on its proposed change to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which closed late last month. The issue is that the requirement – on green belt sites only – for 50% affordable housing across the country, coupled with a stricter viability testing procedure, will effectively hinder schemes from coming forward.

The UK’s biggest pure-play housebuilder, Barratt, has already said that it has pulled work on three “in-flight” land promotion deals because of the altered viability, at the same time as predicting a wider “land strike” if Labour’s plans are delivered as proposed.

While some in local authority circles remain sceptical of what they regard as developer special pleading to be allowed super profits, there are growing fears from the other side of the fence that it could hamper Labour’s efforts to use land from the green belt to meet its highly ambitious 1.5 million homes target over the parliament. There are also concerns that it could make it easier for anti-development councils to block schemes, and will encourage sites in the wrong places to come forward. 

So why are the proposals so controversial, and what will their impact be?