STOP GARDENS BEING CONCRETED OVER!

The practice of “garden grabbing”, where developers build homes or blocks of flats on back gardens, is dramatically changing the character of many suburban areas throughout the UK, leading to high levels of unsustainable development and increasing housing densities in areas previously characterised as leafy suburbs. Some figures suggest that over 180,000 buildings have been put on back gardens in the last five years.
Conservatives have been warning about such development, which often puts strain on local services and causes substantial environmental damage, for some time. We have pointed to two key factors driving “garden grabbing”, namely the fact that gardens are classified as brownfield land and the iniquitous government density targets that have the consequence of forcing the largest number of units onto the smallest space possible.
A new Conservative government would reverse the classification of gardens as brownfield and abolish density targets allowing local communities to protect the character of the area in which they live. This is in stark contrast to Labour who have turned a blind eye whilst thousands of back gardens have been concreted over and some communities changed forever.
This problem is of great concern to many people in Brighton Kemptown. I am delighted with this policy, and hope it will soon be enacted if we are elected!