Almost 835,000 acres have been concreted over in Britain, new data shows, while the so-called Conservative Party wants to build over even more green belt land to make way for new housing.
Satellite analysis revealed that between 1990 and 2015, a total of 1,303 square miles (3,376 square kilometres) in Britain was lost to urban sprawl.
Overall, grasslands were reduced by an astonishing 2,960 square miles (7,668 square kilometres), or 1.9 million acres — although a portion of this was replaced by woodland.
The UK Centre of Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH), which carried out the study, pointed out that the landscape covered by new urban development, most of which was in England, constitutes an area almost the size of Cornwall.
Britain’s population soared from 57 million in 1990 to an estimated 65.6 million in 2016, with mass immigration responsible for 90 per cent of population growth in England between the years 2005 and 2014.
The Migration Watch UK think tank has previously claimed that keeping up with the additional housing demands driven by mass immigration will require the construction of the equivalent of one new home every six minutes, “night and day”.
Indeed, even in places like the South Downs National Park plans have been approved for the construction of 250 new houses every year.
Research carried out last year showed that relaxing restrictions around building on Britain’s green belt — policy designed to protect Britain’s countryside from urban sprawl — would be deeply unpopular with voters.
Only 15 per cent of the public and just 13 per cent of Conservative Party supporters said they would back proposals making it easier to build housing and other urban infrastructure on green belt land.
Despite this, a number of key Tory figures including former housing secretary and chancellor, Sajid Javid, have expressed support for concreting over more of Britain’s countryside.
These also include international trade secretary and equalities minister Liz Truss, who has repeatedly argued that “a lot more” green belt land should be ripped up to make way for housing.
Bow Group chairman Ben Harris-Quinney told Breitbart London: “The Conservative Party, at both local and national level, have consistently talked a good game about preserving our green belt and countryside. The experience of their last 10 years in government has been totally contrary to this stated aim, however.”
“We continue to see record numbers of people pouring into the country each year, usually exceeding 600,000, which is more than the population of Manchester,” he said, describing it as “no surprise” that such a huge area of the United Kingdom has been concreted over “by successive governments all addicted to mass immigration.”
“A Bow Group study in 2016 found that 83 per cent of new British citizens were either foreign-born or born to a foreign parent. If it wasn’t for immigration, Britain would have no need to turn its green and pleasant land into housing estates.”
Harris-Quinney, who heads Britain’s oldest conservative think tank, added that the government, which claims to want to be the “greenest ever”, would “do well to ignore [child climate change activist] Greta Thunberg” and to instead listen to its own voters’ pleas to maintain the country’s green belt.
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