Birmingham must build on green belt to meet housing needs, warns Council chief

The Council had identified sites to accommodate 43,000 homes, nearly half of what is needed to meet the city's demand of 100,000 homes over the next 15 years. However, the rest of these homes may need to be built on green belt land, Barrow said.

"We have a building requirement the likes of which have not been seen since the 1930s," said Barrow. “We’re going to have to get into the green belt discussion in a serious way. The green belt was designated in the 1940s, but it is all a bit of an emotive subject. Around 10% of the UK is currently developed and models show that if we built every proposed project in the UK (in the green belt), that figure would only go up to 11.5%," he said.

"We have 160,000 commuters currently leapfrogging the green belt (and) putting infrastructure under enormous strain. A lot of the green belt isn’t green, You’ve got batches of green belt between A-roads that are just scrubland. We need to get into this issue now,” he said.

Barrow's comments follow Communities Secretary Eric Pickles' speech at the Party conference, in which he assured delegates that the Conservative party was committed to protecting the green belt.

"There has been a lot of press speculation in recent weeks on the green belt. Protecting the character of the countryside is stamped deep into the heart of Conservativism and I want to be absolutely clear - the green belt plays vital role in stopping urban sprawl - and we will protect it," Pickles said.