Louie French: Why do Khan and Cunningham want to build over Bexley?

Cllr Louie French is the Deputy Leader of Bexley Council. He was the Conservative candidate for Eltham in the 2019 General Election.

Bexley has long had to tolerate ‘zone one’ London mayors who know nothing about our borough. Not since Boris Johnson have we had a mayor who actually understood what makes outer London tick.

Over the last decade, Sadiq Khan has made it his personal mission to erode the character of boroughs like Bexley: waging war on cars, suburban housing, and extracting police from our streets to central London. But now it’s getting worse.

Labour politicians have their sights on outer London’s precious green belt. The Government has created a dubious ‘grey belt’ definition. Instead of allowing building on disused petrol stations and car parks within the green belt, as claimed, developers are actually using it to build on green spaces and farmers’ fields. Now, Labour are creating a ‘default yes’ to build on green belt land near train stations and giving Sadiq Khan the power to overrule councils who say no.

Bexley voters rightly want to say no to Labour’s plans at the ballot box in May. Locally, Labour activists in Bexley deny that the Government has any plan to build on our green spaces, distancing themselves from their party’s own policies. Voters won’t be fooled. But Labour has unexpected allies from another party, who have selected their own ‘zone one’ mayoral candidate to lead their London election campaign.

Reform’s London mayoral candidate, Laila Cunningham, has been caught saying one thing to Oxford undergraduates and another to residents in the likes of Bexley, Bromley and Havering. Speaking at the Oxford Union in February, she told students that the green belt is “the worst name you can imagine, it’s not daffodils and rabbits” and “a lot of it is actually industrial wasteland”. When challenged on it when campaigning in Bexleyheath, she claimed: “We would always protect the green belt”.

The problem is that’s not true either. In the London Assembly, Reform’s group leader voted with Sadiq Khan’s Labour group to stop the City Hall Conservatives’ bid to protect the green belt. In an explanation of his vote many months later, he explained that Reform backed Labour’s dubious ‘grey belt’ policy — which is precisely what Laila Cunningham means when she described London’s green belt as “industrial wasteland”. They’re not being honest with voters, and we have the receipts to prove their unholy alliance with Sadiq Khan.

In Bexley, we’ve already seen what Labour and Reform’s ‘grey belt’ policy means in practice. A developer has attempted to argue that a nature conservation area and a farmers’ field are ‘grey belt’ in a bid to build large industrial battery storage facilities on our green spaces. With hundreds of residents raising concerns, Bexley’s Conservative Council rightly refused their bid and at the 11th hour this month, the developer filed an appeal. Residents are now asking whether the developer thinks a Reform-led Bexley Council would back their ‘grey belt’ argument?

As one of the younger MPs in Westminster, I personally understand the difficulties of getting on the housing ladder in London.  London needs more homes, and over the past four years, we’ve met our housing targets in Bexley, delivering more than 2,500 homes. Our ambitious local plan also identifies places for sustainable development in town centres and near new infrastructure, like the Elizabeth Line in Abbey Wood. We are far from what could be described as a NIMBY borough.

But rather than focusing on what is and isn’t working across London to unlock sustainable development, Labour and Reform are offering a false solution that will not deliver the well-connected, beautiful, family-oriented developments our borough desires.

For a decade, Sadiq Khan has been responsible for housebuilding in London, yet he’s failed to deliver on our city’s housing needs. The problem isn’t solely about land supply: many brownfield sites are sitting empty as Conservative colleagues in City Hall continue to highlight. The problem is that his policies have made it too expensive and complicated to build in London. With over 500 pages and 123 planning policies, an independent report found Mayor Khan’s planning policies “frustrated” rather than “facilitated” the development of brownfield land. This bureaucracy delays planning decisions by seven weeks compared to England’s next four largest cities.

But it’s not just the London Plan alone; it’s combined with the cumulative impact of policy costs. For example, section 106 payments, community infrastructure levy payments, mayoral community infrastructure levy payments, carbon offset levies, biodiversity net gain requirements, undeliverable affordability targets, and the new building safety levy. However, well-intentioned as each of these policies is, it’s clear that neither the Mayor nor the Government has grasped that if you add too much cost and regulation to building homes, homes will not be built, especially with the current economic backdrop.

Without a fundamental simplification of housebuilding in London — starting with axing much of the London Plan — then we cannot house a new generation of aspirational Londoners. Attempts to push development onto green spaces are both naive and reckless; they’ll ruin what makes places like Bexley and Bromley special places to live, leave brownfield land unused, and still fail to address the real pressing challenges facing housebuilders. Bexley must reject Labour and Reform’s ‘grey belt’ policy to keep our borough green.

Whether it’s Sadiq Khan or Laila Cunningham, we cannot trust ‘zone one’ politicians who don’t understand why so many people choose to live in the suburbs.