Ben Goldstone, Croydon Socialist Party
A report has found that the poorest areas in England face the deepest cuts to green space under changes to planning law. The report, commissioned by several live and environmental NGOs, found that more than 7.4 million people living in England reside in areas without immediate access to biodiverse nature, including 1.4 million children under 15. This extreme poverty of nature is driven by disparities within towns and cities instead of a rural-urban divide, and a new ‘loophole’ for developers will only make it worse.
Rules introduced in 2024 made it mandatory in England for most new developments to provide at least a 10% increase in the value in biodiversity in order to help mitigate the effects on the environment. The Labour government however has introduced a series of exemptions for housebuilders after lobbying from the sector, including exemptions for sites of 0.2 hectares or less. There is also an ongoing consultation which would take away biodiversity rules for brownfield sites of up to 2.5 hectares.
Charities have warned that these exemptions would hit poorest communities worst, reducing their access to nature even further, while more well-off citizens continue to enjoy the privilege of green spaces. Nowhere is this shown to be more obvious than in Croydon, London. The report showed that it has he most extreme inequality in access to nature. 73% of richer areas enjoy easy access to nature, compared to 24% in the most deprived areas.
This shows plainly why housing decisions cannot be left up to the private sector. Working-class people deserve access to wildlife and nature. We need to fight back against any attempt that big housing developers make to take that away from us.
What we need is working-class control over home building as well as infrastructure. This would include a mass council house building campaign of affordable good-quality and environmentally sustainable homes, alongside public leisure facilities, including parks and nature reserves. You just need to look to Liverpool in the 1980s for what can be achieved. The council led by Militant – the Socialist Party’s predecessor – launched its Urban Regeneration Strategy and built thousands of council houses alongside leisure centres, schools, and parks, then fought the Thatcher government to pay up the bill.
This shows what can be achieved when the working class get organised and take on the bosses and their politicians. Part of that fight is building a new working-class party that won’t just capitulate to demands from private developers and the billionaires.
