There is a little bit of a housing crisis in the UK where there are not enough homes for the growing population. The elderly are living longer, and so there are more and more citizens in the country each year. Understandbly something needs to be done to provide enough housing for the public in the coming years. But building homes on greenbelt land should be the last resort, and I just don't believe there is a viable argument to build on greenbelt land as of yet. My main cause of argument here, is that there is an incredible amount of derelict buildings which should be tranfsormed into new homes first. Derelict buildings are not only a waste of usable land in towns and cities, but also degrade an area by becoming a target for graffiti and litter. Before we start building on protected greenbelt land, unprotected and should be built upon first.

The housing situation in Britain is lamentable. And one solution is to rethink what we need from greenbelt land. It tends to be found in areas where wealthy people live and protect the land from further development. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of homes are needed and arbitrary protection of land is one of the factors fuelling high house prices, which are 40% more than in the Netherlands. And look at the data: just building in a half-mile strip around the London greenbelt would result in constructing 800,000 homes which are badly needed in the capital, especially when new developments are snapped up by overseas buyers as investments. Greenbelts form protective zones for wealthy people, while forcing the less well-off to make longer journeys around them - hence communters travlling to London from Norfolks. The intent of the greenbelt was good. As it stands, it helps perpetuate inequalities in Britain at a time more cheap housing is desperately needed.

We don't need to build on greenbelt land. Hundreds of houses lie empty, bought by foreign investors to be used as profit. Some parts of the UK do not have a housing problem at all, and there are plenty of spare properties. But the areas have become run down and unattractive. These areas should be reinvigorated and made attractive as places to live, or cleared and rebuilt on.

If the UK didn't exist, it would help the housing situation; get rid of the US, UK and all other nations and then actual compromise can begin

In my view, this is a knee-jerk policy which hasn't been thought through. Leaving aside the decimation of our beautiful rural landscape, the choice of where to put these new homes is, inevitably, driven by money. Yes, we have a shortage of housing. Unfortunately, when the decision was taken to sell of Council Houses to their owners, nobody in Government thought about replacing these and this, in part, as well as the expanding population, has led to the housing crisis. I live in a small village in the English countryside. We are facing (and fighting) around 6 different planning applications for development. Were these to be approved, it would increase the size of the village by 62%. There is very limited public transport so anyone moving here would need to drive. The (Victorian) sewers are not equipped to deal with the volume of waste that will be generated by these new homes. The traffic levels, noise and light pollution will increase exponentially. The wishes of those who have chosen to live in a rural community seem to be irrelevant, the Councils press ahead regardless of objections, (the bigger the development, the larger the financial incentive for them) and seem to be hell-bent on destroying William Blake's "England's green and pleasant land." Surely the place to start is with existing developments that are either derelict or unfinished, followed by brown-field sites before anyone starts considering further damage to the beautiful countryside for which the UK is famous?