The green belt was meant to be safe

"The green belt is a Labour achievement and we mean to build on it." The statement may be apocryphal, though the fact that it is attributed to John Prescott, famed for his tussles with the English language, suggests it might have been said, somewhere, sometime. (It is not in Hansard, despite Tory claims to the contrary.)

The question is, will the green belt survive the Government's attention, and especially the revisions it is making to planning procedures and structures? Though yesterday's statement by Mr Prescott on the need for more housing explicitly defended green belts around London and 13 other areas, there is still doubt that the concept will survive in the long term.

The first green belt was designated around London in 1932, after an outcry over the "urban sprawl". Now there are similar areas around many cities, though the one around London – at 514,300 hectares (about 2,000 sq miles) – is still the largest, twice as big as the next largest ones in the Peak District and around Manchester. In 2000, 13 per cent of England's land area was designated as green belts.

But the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), set up in 1926, says that the green belt is "always under threat". Henry Oliver, its head of planning, said yesterday: "All sorts of people are always trying to nibble away at it, ever since it was introduced in the 1950s as a genuine instrument of government policy. But its usefulness goes on."

The pressure comes from the need for more homes as more people live alone. The Government estimates that 150,000 new houses are needed across England every year.

The CPRE suggests green belts are dying a "death by a thousand cuts". The Government approved 119 developments on 1,300 hectares of green-belt land between 1997 and 2001, almost half of 251 proposals it considered.

Yesterday's announcement that the Government will insist on new developments, some on green-belt land, carries the first hint that nowhere is sacrosanct. The Local Government Association called the plans, which will override those of local councils, undemocratic. It is a view echoed by the CPRE.

Liz Potter, the director of policy for the National Housing Federation, said the most important consideration was whether the four requirements for sustainable new housing – good local transport, health, education and shops – were met.

Nobody thinks the announcement presages the immediate death of the green belt. But everyone is waiting for the first minister to loosen its regulations. That could trigger a huge fight between the people who live in green-belt houses, and those who want to live there. The problem for politicians is that people who don't live in a place don't have a vote there – and those who do will surely vote against change.