Following on from my earlier post about the draft London Plan’s “Broad Locations for Growth“, I’ve looked more closely at the stations identified for intensification to try and understand where the new homes identified within the borough targets might be located. These are all described below, listed by BLG and station name. On each map I’ve included the 480m, 800m and 1,200m radii which correspond to the density and height targets in the draft Plan, as follows:

As a reminder, here are the draft London Plan housing targets for the boroughs which have at least some degree of green belt release being required of them. Apart from Havering and Hillingdon, the draft London Plan housing targets are less than those required by the National Planning Policy Framework. London’s total is significantly less than the 880,000 standard method requirements. Expect this to be challenged.

Here are the criteria for what counts as “Green Belt sustainable location”, according to the Plan:

Major proposals should only be regarded as being within a sustainable location for the development type proposed where at least one of the following sustainable location tests are met, as relevant:  

1. The site is identified as such within an adopted Local Plan, site allocation and/or masterplan that is consistent with this Plan.
2. The site is associated with a government-designated New Town, as described by National Policy Statement.  
3. Where 1 and 2 are not met:
   • For residential-led proposals, the vast majority of new homes would be situated within a 1200m walking distance (or 15 minutes) of one of the rail stations shown on Figure 6.4, or within 400m of a bus route that meets the criteria in Box PV7C.

“Box PV7A: Green Belt sustainable locations”, Draft London Plan, July 2026

Box PV7C contains the following criteria (as I said, we’ll come back to this…but not yet):

For major residential developments, a bus corridor will only be considered to meet the service quality necessary to justify a sustainable release of Green Belt and support densities outlined in Table 6.3 where this is agreed by TfL and meets the following criteria:

1. Direct access, in less than 12 minutes, to a rail station which has a service every 7.5 minutes or better through the inter-peak, as well as peak periods of the day.  
2. A frequent bus service that meets capacity as required during hours that the associated rail service is operating.  
3. Fully dedicated right of way, for example busway or bus/cycle-only streets, bus lanes or bus gates, within greenfield portions of the site, at least 80 per cent dedicated right of way overall and priority at junctions where feasible.  
4. Average service speeds in excess of 20km/h.
5. Bus stops designed to handle up to two buses at a time with shelters and real-time passenger information provided.

“Box PV7C: Green Belt bus-corridor quality criteria”, Draft London Plan, July 2026

Now that’s clear…let’s set sail!

Crews Hill & Chase Park BLG

Falling entirely within Enfield, the Crews Hill & Chase Park BLG doesn’t appear to include very much of the latter, and a lot of the former—which captures the area around the last two stations on the Piccadilly Line.

All in, the draft London Plan expects the council to deliver 7,000 homes on Enfield’s green belt across the next decade. Based on the below, almost all of this (and more) will be around Crews Hill, as the remaining stations in the BLG offer slim pickings, as you’ll see. The New Town proposition suggests this might include as many as 21,000.

Cockfosters

The first stop on our little saunter around the suburbs is close to home for me: Cockfosters. At the northern end of the Piccadilly Line, this is about ten minutes’ walk from where I live in New Barnet.

Cockfosters is one of two stations either side of Trent Park, the former hunting ground of Henry IV and now a public park owned by Enfield Council (the boundary with Barnet runs down Cockfosters Road, immediately to the east). At its centre is the former Middlesex University campus, now redeveloped into a residential neighbourhood by Berkeley Homes. It’s a peculiar mash-up of stark modernism and twee pseudo-Georgiana—like wandering through a budget open world computer game where the sectors unlock all in one go. A one-bedroom flat here will set you back £760,000 and you’ll need to get a shuttle bus to the station.

The listed mansion at the heart of the development, once owned by the Sassoon family, became a POW camp for German officers in WWII. It’s now a museum. British agents bugged the billiards table, revealing vital secrets that contributed to the eventual Allied victory.

Development on green belt in the immediate vicinity of the station is highly challenging. Trent Park is one giant conservation area, a designation which covers the mansion and the entirety of the land around it. Apart from the already-consented, but not yet commenced, housing on Cockfosters Station car park (which isn’t in the green belt, and sits just outside the CA), there’s little opportunity for intensification.

The 1,200m radius catches part of Hadley Wood Golf Club, but as that is privately-owned and has a long waiting list, there’s no chance of anything happening here in the near future. The area around it comprises Monken Hadley Common, which is managed by a trust on behalf of the public.

Crews Hill

Aah, the biggie. This is the location of one of London’s two new towns. It’s obvious why this was chosen: apart from the green belt designation, there’s very little to restrict development in the area around the station, other than a little local opposition. There are no conservation areas or protected habitats within 1,200m of the station itself, and the golf course is owned by the council.

There are a lot of large freehold parcels here, too—and smaller ones clustered along Cattlegate Road, where the nurseries and garden centres (and Thompson’s of Crews Hill) are located. It’s pretty clear that all of Enfield’s green belt housing—and then some—could be located here.

Before changing hands in May the council was planning for much more, but given the new administration’s opposition to the idea of a new town on its doorstep, I think it likely that the Mayor will need to step in and create a Mayoral Development Corporation to deliver what the council refuses to.

The irony of this is that the station itself was built specifically to enable new housing around it. This followed the typical late nineteenth and early twentieth century pattern of building stations slightly ahead of the expansion of London’s suburbs to capture the land value uplift as it transformed from agricultural to residential use. The little estate of houses to the south of the nurseries—comprising Cypress Avenue, Rosewood Drive, Ash Ride, Beech Avenue, and…er…Golf Ride—is an island of non-green belt and the first phase of a residential development that didn’t really get going before WWII and was then frozen in time by the introduction of the green belt in the Town and Country Planning Act in 1947. We will see this pattern repeated ad nauseam, throughout this journey.

Gordon Hill

Gordon Hill is the station before Crews Hill on the Great Northern route to Hertford North, travelling out from central London. Most of the northern section of the BLG zone is occupied by Clay Hill Conservation Area, with the Lavender Hill cemetery closer in. There are few obvious locations for housing.

Local enthusiasts have recently refurbished a Second World War pillbox opposite the station, installed to repel invading German tanks rolling southwards from Hertfordshire.

The only unimpeded location of any significance is the three parcels 51, 52 and 53—but they appear to comprise mature woodland (although the OS mapping doesn’t really show this) and, well, trees are important. There’s a way through, however, if this were to happen, as the derelict Arnold House on the Ridgeway has an unrealised consent for development and could provide the missing route through.

The large parcel at 102 lies partly within 400m of a well-connected bus stop; as do the Chase Park parcels at 55 and 56, which are closer to Oakwood (see below). All of these have the potential for new housing.

Hadley Wood

Hadley Wood is the home of footballers and merchant bankers, plus—according to Ian Nairn—”one of the most eloquent village sequences in England”. That was before they built parades of tacky mansions either side of Beech Hill.

The area around the station itself is a conservation area, but there’s a chunk of farmland immediately to the west (parcels 86, 88 and 89) all within 480m which are ripe for development. Parcel 76, to the northeast, comprises Slopers Pond Farm, but I can’t see why the fields closest to the station couldn’t be turned into housing, although access is limited. It’s also up a steep hill, which might make the walk home from the station harder than it should be.

A large portion of the developable area around this station is outside Greater London, falling within Hertsmere (parcels 90 and 385, in particular). The council there takes a very dim view of green belt development, so coordinated expansion around the station seems unlikely. It’s not subject to the Mayoral planning powers, either, for that reason. Parcels 77 and 107, to the east of Cockfosters Road are also within 400m of well-connected bus stops, so some housing could feasibly be delivered here.

Oakwood

Oakwood is another of Charles Holden’s heroic Piccadilly Line stations, completed in 1933 and which was, for a brief time, the final stop on this branch of the line before Cockfosters opened four months later (also by Holden). It was previously called Enfield West, adopting its current name in 1946.

Like Cockfosters, which lies to the west, much of the area around the station falls within the Trent Park conservation area. There’s a council-owned golf course as part of this, but the GLA’s hopes for development (and hence, the name) lie to the east which appear as plots 55 and 56 in the map above. Both are unencumbered green belt, both are optioned up—mainly by Fairview and Comer Homes—and both are allocated for development in the (almost adopted) Enfield Local Plan, but at far lower densities than the GLA would like. This is the Chase Farm (or Chase Park, according to Enfield) referred to in the name of the BLG.

There’s also a big area of sidings lying between Oakwood and Cockfosters (parcel 74) which is likely to be needed for TfL operational requirements. Could development happen here somehow?

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Croydon-New Addington BLG

Croydon used to be the second most populous borough in London, but after an astonishing bout of housing delivery under the 2014 and 2018 Labour administrations, snatched this accolade from Barnet.

Since being booted out of office in 2022, and failing to win back overall control in 2026, the Labour administration’s housebuilding in the borough has—like most places—collapsed, and the idea of green belt release is something of an anathema to the largely-Conservative voting population of the southern wards, where most of it is located.

The BLG here is concentrated principally around the string to tram stops between Lloyd Park and New Addington, although inexplicably includes a handful of mainline stations that have almost zero green belt nearby.

Tory Mayor Jason Perry has already mobilised a campaign against the draft London Plan, which requires the council to deliver 5,600 homes on green belt in the coming ten years. Good luck with that.

Addington Village

I was wavering between three stars and four stars for this one, partly because half of the area immediately around the tram stop itself is within the Addington Village Conservation Area. But, beyond this, there are two vast golf courses—Addington Court and Addington Palace—sitting partially within the outer BLG ring. Given that both courses, one of which is council-owned, the other private (having been flogged off by the council in a fire sale), exceed 100ha in size, there’s no reason why some of the land within them couldn’t be released for development with the remaining courses reduced slightly in size. In fact, Addington Court consists of two 18-hole courses, which seems rather profligate. The club was recently sold to a developer called Fairway Capital which has earmarked the site for development. They’ll be licking their lips at the new London Plan, I should wager.

Plots 318 and 340, which lie to the south and east of the tram stop, are not subject to any existing planning constraints, so look ripe for development. At the proposed London Plan densities, parcel 340 could take up to as many as 2,000 homes at heights of between 3 and 5 storeys. 318 looks to be owned by the council, and contains a playing field and public open space.

Addiscombe

Even one star might be too generous for this area, with the green belt barely touching the outer ring of the BLG zone around the tram stop. What land exists in this area accommodates Lloyd Park and (you guessed it) another golf course: Shirley Park (check out their website for some fine drone footage of the area).

Limited opportunities for development, then, as even the parcel of land at 308 is the playing fields of Trinity School which, as a specialist sports school, presumably won’t be relinquishing its playing fields without a fight.

Coombe Lane

Another tram stop, Coombe Lane is weirdly surrounded by green belt and a handful of houses to the south, but provides easy access to the Addington Hills parkland immediately to the north. Apparently you can see Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath from the top of the highest point.

To the southeast is Heathfield, a large estate acquired by Croydon Council in 1964 (back when they were buying, rather than selling, stuff…but…hang on) which includes the Croydon Ecology Centre, an operation which, presumably, isn’t compatible with high density housing development. The house itself is Grade II listed.

Elsewhere within this region is the Royal Russell (excellent name) Independent Boarding School which I think is unlikely to welcome much in way of housing development anywhere on or near its grounds. Which are substantial.

The BLG zone also captures parts of Shirley Park and Addington Palace golf courses, hence the two star rating.

East Croydon

I can’t quite believe that East Croydon even features in this gazetteer, given that it features some of the tallest residential buildings in London and is not what anyone would call a leafy suburb. But, for completeness, I’m going to include it because, brushing the southeast corner of the BLG zone, is a tiny area of green belt. Which is a park. That’s it. Nul point.

Fieldway

Now we’re talking.

Fieldway tram stop is a bit like one of those “mirror towns” where the railway line (or, in this case, tramline) separates an area of development from open space. Immediately to the west of the stop lies Addington Court Golf Course, which we covered above. It’s close to Addington Village, so the same principles apply. There’s very little to prevent development here at high densities, apart from angry golfers.

The area to the east of the tram stop is the Fieldway Estate itself, part of the New Addington New Town, started in the 1930s, but halted by WWII. Originally intended to provide a “garden village” of 4,400 homes on green field land, but in the end achieved less than that; I’m guessing as a result of green belt policies being introduced in the post-war period. Anyway, we’ve done it before and we can do it again. Lots of homes can be built here. Four stars.

Gravel Hill

Gravel Hill sits between Coombe Lane and Addington Village on the southern fork of the eastern tram line which ends up in New Addington. Much of the area around it falls within the adjoining BLG zones, including the two Addington golf courses and the Heathfield Estate.

There’s a small parcel of land, not numbered on the plan, immediately adjacent to the station which could accommodate around 400 homes as proposed LP densities. Parcel 240, to the east, is closer to Addington Village trams stop.

Clearly this is an area of London which is going to require a comprehensive and strategic masterplan if it’s going to come forward in any kind of intentional and coherent way. The council may resist, but that’s simply going to result in the same development coming forward in an unintentional and incoherent way instead. It’s pretty clear that none of this green belt land meets the criteria required of it in the National Planning Policy Framework, and therefore most of it will be subject to the grey belt definition—and subject to speculative applications, which are likely to succeed—especially if the 2024 and 2025 housing delivery tests show a significant drop in performance from the borough’s previously outstanding results.

King Henry’s Drive

Just like Gravel Hill to the north, King Henry’s Drive lies between New Addington and the Addington Court Golf Course, to the west. That means that there’s a large area of developable land immediately next to the station; albeit currently in use for the very important pastime of bashing small white balls about.

Now, I wouldn’t want to make any assumptions about how many of New Addington’s residents make regular use of the golf centre, but given that the draft London Plan requires any green belt release to adopt a “landscape-led” approach, where 3ha of accessible green space (AGS) must be provided for every 1,000 new inhabitants. At the kind of densities being proposed, that’s roughly a ratio of one-to-one green space to development area.

The residents of New Addington might have a lot of green fields on their doorstep, but it’s almost all out of bounds. Ironically, developing on it might mean they end up with more public space than they had to start with.

If you want to get a sense of what this area is like, I found this great photo of King Henry’s Drive in 1997 on the Museum of London website. It hasn’t changed much, bar the Rover 213.

Lebanon Road

Just like East Croydon, which lies just to the west, the bottom southeast corner of the BLG includes a triangle of green belt which is entirely within Lloyd Park, rendering it undevelopable. Again I’ve included it for completeness.

Lloyd Park

The tram stop takes its name from the huge park it’s right next to, so you’d assume – correctly – that there’s not much developable green belt in the immediate vicinity. There is, however, a decent-ish site to the east of the Coombe Wood School (parcel 315) which could be developed, within the 480 – 800m band. It looks like a wood yard. Given the appalling air pollution generated by domestic stoves, its days are probably numbered. Other than that, developable green belt is thin on the ground.

New Addington

Once upon a time, the garden village of New Addington was known locally as “Little Siberia”, partly because its location up on a hill made it noticeably colder than the areas around, and partly because it was cut off from the rest of Croydon. That was until the completion of the tram connection in 2000, which linked New Addington to central Croydon and on to Wimbledon.

New Addington marks the terminus point for the the tram, close to Central Parade, from which the streets around radiate. The seemingly endless links of Addington Court Golf Club lie to the west, with a strip of land along Featherbed Lane marking the boundary with the non-London district of Tandridge, to the south. A peninsula of green belt, called Hutchinson’s Bank, runs along the southwestern perimeter of New Addington, which comprises a 22ha nature reserve looked after by The Wildlife Trust but owned by Croydon Council (parcel 350). It’s an undulating chalky topography that marks the beginning of the South Downs.

With the exception of the (admittedly, large) golf course, there’s little prospect of development happening around these parts. Hence: two stars.

Sandilands

Here we are again: back to the suburbs west of East Croydon, another tram stop on the eastern branch, and the final one before the line forks and heads off to New Addington in the south, and Beckenham Junction in the north. As with Lloyd Park, East Croydon and Lebanon Road, there’s no opportunity for development on the green belt here.

South Croydon

Last in the list of Croydon BLG stations is South Croydon, not a tram stop this time, but on the Southern Railway line linking London Bridge to Caterham. This neighbourhood marks the transition between the metropolitan centre which was transformed by Sir James Marshall in the 1960s, and whose notorious flyover marks the boundary between the concrete contexture of East Croydon, and the leafier suburbs to the south.

There’s not much else to say about the potential for green belt development here: captured within the 1,200m radius from the station is the western extent of Lloyd Park; see above. I can’t for the life of me understand why this was included in the list of BLGs.

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Dagenham BLG

In his introduction to Nairn’s London, first published in 1966, the writer described his book as “a record of all the things that have moved me, between Uxbridge and Dagenham”. He didn’t have very much to say about Dagenham, mind, with the exception of a pub (of course) – the Merry Fiddlers, which was demolished in 1992 to make way for…a Shell petrol station. Iron Maiden played one of their early gigs there. In the pub, not the garage.

I don’t really understand why the Dagenham BLG exists. There’s so little green belt here, and what there is of it is filled with public parks which, presumably, are not being proposed for development. These are also some of the most deprived wards in the country, and low house prices means that housing delivery will be a challenge.

Dagenham Dock

Home of the Ford Fiesta and the inspiration for the film Made in Dagenham, which dramatised the successful fight for equal pay for the factory’s female machinists, it’s difficult to imagine a part of London that’s less likely to have any green belt close by. But, barely touching the northeastern corner of the BLG zone is Dagenham Old Park (or, Old Dagenham Park, depending on who you ask), a sliver of anachronous green belt appended to the Beam River Valley; also known as the River Rom – from where Romford gets its name.

Housing Association Peabody has acquired the former Ford Motor parts factory next to the station, and is slowly transforming it into a new residential neighbourhood – which they’ve chosen to call “Dagenham Green” – alongside a raft of other regeneration schemes, including the huge Barking Riverside scheme to the west. But an area for green belt release, this is not.

Dagenham East

Dagenham East marks the final station on the District and Hammersmith & City London Underground Lines before it crosses over into the People’s Republic – sorry – I meant the London Borough of Havering.

There’s actually a tiny splinter of green belt right next to the station, here: you can step off the District Line platform and almost straight into the countryside, with the tube running alongside the lakeside to the north. On the opposite side of this is the London East-UK Business and Technical Park, owned by Barking & Dagenham Council.

In terms of developable areas, there are limited options. Eastbrook School has a large playing field around 500m from the station (parcel 24), which I’m guessing they’d be loathe to relinquish. There’s also the immense May & Baker Way car park (part of parcel 26), which is designated green belt, serving the adjacent Goresbrook Cricket Club – which appears to have two pitches, one of which (parcel 25) looks less used than the other (parcel 7).

Parcel 192 sits just across the border into Havering and is occupied by the Mardyke Farm Landfill site, which is privately owned and – as the name suggests – a former gravel pit that was then used to illegally dump waste before being cleaned up (a bit) and left as an open space. There may be plans to develop it, according to the Havering Herald, but the owners have not ingratiated themselves with local residents, having been fined £48,000 for allowing hazardous waste to be dumped here a couple of decades ago. Housing development in the near future seems unlikely.

Dagenham Heathway

I have very little to say about Dagenham Heathway, because its tiny bit of green belt at the Old Park has been described endlessly elsewhere in this piece. There’s no scope for green belt development here whatsoever, although the Council-owned shopping centre and high street from which the station gets its name is earmarked for redevelopment providing 860 homes.

Elm Park

Together with Hornchurch, Elm Park is within the London Borough of Havering, which itself has three distinct BLGs – more than any other borough. The Elm Park neighbourhood is flanked to the east and west by green belt, almost all of which is occupied by various public parks, country parks and sports grounds. These include the gloriously-named Eastbrookend Country Park to the west, which is bisected by the River Beam and marks the boundary between Barking & Dagenham and Havering; Harrow Lodge Park to the north, and Hornchurch Country Park to the southeast.

There’s really very limited scope for development on any of this. The large sports ground to the southwest of the station (parcel 11) falls within the 800 – 1,200m BLG ring, but there’s a Grade II listed Manor House in the middle of it, and I can’t see the council – who owns this facility – allowing development on the playing fields immediately to the north. In the event that a modicum of housing is allowed here, one star. Otherwise: zero stelle.

Elm Park itself was a garden city developed, like New Addington, in the 1930s by the developer Costain. Harrow Lodge Park formed part of the land acquisition, and was donated to the community by the developer – a nice precedent, perhaps, for the provisions set out in the draft London Plan.

Hornchurch

Into Havering proper now, and we’re finally starting to see some decent bits of green belt appearing as suburban East London opens up to the Essex countryside. The edge of the settlement is marked by the River Ingrebourne, which cleaves its way through the borough from Brentwood, joining the Thames at Rainham.

There’s some developable land on the other side of the river, with a number of parcels of land in the outer limits of the BLG zone beyond the woodland either side of the water. The primary opportunity for development here would have been the St George’s Hospital site (parcels 184 and 185) but this was snapped up by Bellway Homes after the facility closed in 2012. It’s a better-than-average layout that achieves a reasonable density for this kind of edge-of-settlement development, but nowhere near the level of density that the draft London Plan expects.

It’s worth noting that a large portion of the BLG around Hornchurch overlaps with the Upminster BLG, so lots of the constraints that apply to Hornchurch apply to Upminster Bridge, too. Which is probably a good thing, as I’ll have run out of steam by then.

Incidentally, Ian Nairn doesn’t describe much east of Dagenham in his book, but he does mention Hornchurch in passing, comparing it to Watford (which he describes as “no fun to look at, yet an exciting feeling to experience”… I’d like that for my epitaph!) as a place that’s “quite different from the indiscriminate rape of places like Hornchurch”. Nice.

That’s it for Dagenham! On to Hillingdon, which neatly takes us back to Ian Nairn as the two poles he used to describe his meanderings around the capital.

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East of Ickenham BLG

There’s something poetic about the choice of name for this BLG. That’s about all that Hillingdon shares with the Salinas Valley of Steinbeck’s novel. There are six stations in the BLG, which overlaps with the West Ruislip BLG. Why they weren’t combined into a single group is unclear, given that Ruislip and Ickenham are served by both the Metropolitan and Piccadilly London Underground lines.

The opportunities for development in Hillingdon appear far greater than they do in Dagenham, partly because Hillingdon possesses some of the most preposterous green belt in London, in many cases islands of the stuff entirely surrounded by development. If you’re looking for the very definition of grey belt, you can find it here.

Hillingdon

Hillingdon station is in the middle of nowhere. The current station was built in the 1990s, designed by Cassidy Taggart Partnership architects, a now-defunct practice. Despite being only 30 years old, it’s locally listed, having won a Civic Trust Award in 1996. It’s immediately recognisable from the A40 as you drive into, or away from, London, sitting atop the retaining wall on the southern side of the Western Avenue.

There are multiple parcels of land immediately around the station which could form part of a major new neighbourhood. A lifetime ago, I worked on designs for a huge new IKEA on the plot immediately to the south of the station, which remains undeveloped to this day. In hindsight (and, to be fair, at the time), the council’s refusal of planning permission for what would have delivered 240 homes as well as the furniture store, was pretty shortsighted. The site is still on the market; maybe the BLG will add impetus to those considering development here.

Buy, anyway: we’re here to learn about the green belt opportunities, and the former IKEA site is not. Nor, for that matter, is the Master Brewer site immediately to the east, which was refused planning permission for 500 homes by the council but overturned by the Mayor in 2020 before the developer, Inland Homes, went bust three years later. The site is also up for sale.

To the west of the station is a triangle of green belt land (parcel 255) which is sandwiched between the tube line and the Western Avenue slipway. Access to the station might be a challenge, given the bewildering array of transport infrastructure and adverse topography. But not impossible. Further west, on the other side of the River Pinn, lies Uxbridge Common, which includes Hillingdon Playing Field and the sports and leisure complex. Both of which are likely to be out of bounds for development.

Eastwards, then, and into the area around RAF Northolt. The fact that the airfield creates an effective ceiling for tall buildings in the region has been a subject of consternation for some time. The safeguarding zone around the landing strip (known as the Obstacle Limitation Surface) means that the new buildings must be referred to the MOD for approval, although what actual height is allowed seems to be something of a mystery.

Assuming that these thresholds can be respected – and access can be achieved – the various parcels including 218, 219, 238, 239 and 242 on the north side of the A40, and the area to the right of the Master Brewer site at parcel 240, all have the potential to come forward as housing.

Ickenham

Ickenham, after which the BLG is named, has some juicy bits of green belt landlocked from the rest of the countryside by the Ruislip London Underground Depot and West Ruislip. Much of this land is in the immediate vicinity of RAF Northolt, and therefore subject to the height restrictions we learned about at Hillingdon. But none of this appears to be well used, and doesn’t form part of any apparent public parks or playing fields.

Parcels 227 and 232 are the largest in this area, both sitting within the 480m – 1,200m distance band from the station. These have title numbers MX92119 and MX89469 respectively. This isn’t particularly important in itself, but for some reason the owners of these cannot be extracted from HM Land Registry records which suggests that they might be owned by the MOD. Someone who knows more about this might be able to shed some light.

There are a couple of stranded fields (parcel 238) which partially (and inexplicably) fall within the Ickenham Village conservation area, but are otherwise ripe for development. Parcel 233 is owned by Transport for London, which presumably would want to encourage development on the non-depot portion of its site.

We mentioned parcel 218 in the Hillingdon section, but looking at it more closely it seems an obvious place for new homes. Sussex Road, to the north, ends abruptly as if it expected to extend further but was unexpectedly curtailed. I’m guessing that this was part of a larger planned estate which was halted by WWII, and the subsequent introduction of the green belt in the 1947 Town & Country Planning Act which froze the estate in its pre-war state. A few hundred yards to the east is what looks like a car dump, protected from development by that very same policy. It doesn’t have a name on Google Maps, which suggests that it might be, I dunno, not exactly legit? Perhaps the council might want to have a poke around.

Northolt

Northolt is Ealing’s only station that falls within a BLG, sitting close to the intersection with both Hillingdon and Harrow. HS2 passes right underneath, on its way to Old Oak Common and central London. In total, 82ha of green belt land falls within Ealing’s BLG zone (excluding accessible bus stops, which adds a little more), yet the borough has not been allocated a green belt housing target. Only a tiny triangle of land to the north west of the station falls within Hillingdon, so Northolt’s inclusion in the policy seems very odd.

Of that 82 hectares, very little is developable green belt, as the open space that exists is largely taken up by public parks. The Ordnance Survey mapping is out of date: what’s shown as a small golf centre beyond Belvue Park in the Northolt Village Conservation Area has gone, and it’s not clear what’s coming forward in its place. I tried to look on Ealing’s website for any planning approvals, but typically it wasn’t working at the time and I had better things to do.

Overlooking the Grand Union Canal, this would make an excellent location for new homes, and in fact, it’s been allocated for over 200 homes in the Ealing local plan. Which I did manage to find.

Immediately to the south, on the opposite side of the Western Avenue, is Smiths Farm (or “Smith’s Farm” if, like me, you’re a stickler for punctuation). Despite its name, this is not a farm, although one did exist here; it’s an area of open space owned by the council, with the western part now being transformed from a storage depot for a trucking company into a new development by housing association Sovereign Network Group, who bought the lease from Howarth Contractors. When complete it will provide 220 affordable homes, in addition to the refurbishment of the locally-listed farmhouse that once, presumably, belonged to Farmer Smith.

On the other side of Kensington Road are the conical mounds of Northalla Park. Climbing to the top of these provides a spectacular view across the city – it’s highly recommended if you find yourself in that part of west London. These mounds were made from the rubble of Wembley Stadium when it was demolished in 2002. The park around it is green belt, and a vital open space for the local community.

Finally, on the western extremity of the BLG, there’s a panhandle of green belt (parcel 199) which sits between two arms of the council-owned Islip Manor Estate. Development here is likely possible, but won’t be popular with local residents.

Ruislip Gardens

It’s impossible to mention Ruislip Gardens without quoting Sir John Betjeman, so here goes:

Served by the Central Line, Ruislip Gardens is elevated above the surrounding streets, with the line itself running parallel to the Great Western route, which no longer stops here. The original plan was to continue the line out to Denham in Buckinghamshire, but that was canned due to the Second World War and – you guessed it – the introduction of the Metropolitan green belt.

Immediately to the south of the station is the business end of RAF Northolt, to the north the Metroland estate that gives the area its name. In his 1974 novel, The Tropic of Ruislip, Leslie Thomas describes the fields as seeming “touchable and yet remote”. This is still the case, I think: the nearest thing that could be described as countryside are some fields to the west, which we’ve explored in the section on Ickenham. I think there’s very little prospect of new homes on green belt happening anywhere near here.

Uxbridge

Uxbridge is the civic heart of Hillingdon, and the location for the fantastic civic centre, designed by RMJM in the early 1970s, shortly after the formation of the boroughs.

The town – and the station, which is on the high street – are close to the western edge of the borough itself, with a large part of the BLG zone sitting within Buckinghamshire, overlapping with the Colne Valley Regional Park. This is also the terminating point for the northern branch of the Piccadilly Line.

There are a few vestigial bits of green belt to the north and south east, but these are mainly public parks. Parcel 256 looks to have a few bits of land that could be built on, but it’s owned by the council and home to the Hillingdon House Farm Newt Waterways Project – and we all know how compatible newts are with housing development.

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Eastern Hainault Loop BLG

Back to east London, now, as we revisit the string of stations that sit along the other end of the Central Line on the bit that loops around the edge of Epping Forest before diving back into Woodford.

The BLG covers the four stations on the easternmost part of the loop, from Newbury Park at the bottom, through Barkingside, Fairlop and Hainault, before it begins its westward trajectory.

But, sticking with the alphabetical order that I’ve chosen simple for logistical purposes, we’re not going to visit them in that order. All four of the stations are within the London Borough of Redbridge, a borough which has to find 5,400 homes from its 16,130 total on green belt. As far as I can tell, this will have to be delivered across just a couple of key sites.

Barkingside

The Central Line runs almost due north from Newbury Park, skirting the edge of Fairlop Waters, a large country park which lies to the east.

The park itself used to be a municipal 27-hole golf course which closed during the pandemic, and was then opened up for public use. The distinctive pattern of fairways and putting greens are still visible in aerial photographs.

Immediately to the south is a cluster of buildings which include the headquarters of the borough’s youth offending team, Redbridge FC, and a council depot. Far be it from me to suggest that most of this might be better placed not immediately outside of a tube station.

Between this and the bowling club, however, is a very large area of undeveloped land which, whilst green belt, appears to be neither public park nor active use. It’s difficult to tell, but a large part of this appears to be owned by Brett Lafarge Aggregates. There’s a gravel extraction site to the east, but the area close to the station could easily be turned into housing. Plans are afoot, it seems, to expand the country park into the area occupied by the earthworks. Roughly 40% of the 480m circle around the station could be developed, yielding (according to the London Plan densities) as many as 4,500 homes. That feels ambitious, but still – there’s a solid opportunity here.

Fairlop

Almost everything that I said about Barkingside also applies to Fairlop, so I won’t repeat myself. To the east lies the country park, although there’s a tempting bit of land (parcel 291) which has the potential to deliver as many as 1,800 homes as the required densities.

There’s a lot hanging on this site, as it’s the only realistic prospect of developing green belt anywhere near the station, hence I’m giving Fairlop just two stars.

Hainault

The northernmost station in the sequence is Hainault, which sits just below the border with Epping Forest (the district, not the actual forest).

Newbury Park

There’s a huge car park next to Newbury Park Station, which is allocated for development in Redbridge’s Local Plan, and the striking modernist bus station, designed by Oliver Hill, is Grade II listed.

A tiny peninsula of green belt extends down towards the station, just to the north of the Oak Parks Secondary School, covering the extent of the bowling green. Other than that, the remaining green belt falls closer to Barkingside.

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Harold Park BLG

There are just two stations forming the Harold Park BLG: Gidea Park and Harold Wood. The name comes from a conflation of the two, but I’m not sure why it’s this way round. Both stations are solidly within Havering; the final two stops on the northern branch of the Elizabeth Line before it exits London and heads off into the wilds of Essex. Well…Brentwood.

More than half of Havering’s total housing target will need to be found on green belt, according to the draft London Plan: 12,060 of its 21,712. How many will be in Gidea Wood Harold Park? Let’s find out.

Gidea Park

Gidea Park Station sits within a conservation area, which began life as Romford Garden Suburb, modelled on the version in Hampstead, and built in the early 1910s.

There’s a smidgen of green belt on the northern extremity, which is occupied by Romford Golf Course. This appears as parcels 180 and 179. It’s a private members’ club, so the chances of handing it over for housing feel limited. There is, however, another golf course – Risebridge – just on the other side of the A12.

Harold Wood

Havering’s easternmost wards have a strong independent streak, returning a full complement of residents’ association councillors in the 2026 local elections when the rest of Havering went almost entirely Reform.

Of all the stations in Havering, this is the one with the most potential for green belt development. The fields to the east of the station are undeveloped and only a few minutes’ walk from the Elizabeth Line station. The large parcels at 174, 175 and 176 in particular are likely to be what the GLA had in mind when considering a BLG here.

To the south of these is Harold Wood Park, offering woodland walks and a multitude of sports pitches, which is unlikely to come forward given its importance to the local community and a council which considers the borough to not even be part of London, and will fight tooth and nail against the Mayor’s plans to build home on green belt land. Just to the south, between the Harold Park and Upminster BLGs (but within neither) land promoter Richborough has recently submitted plans for an urban extension on green belt. Expect more.

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Mill Hill & Barnet BLG

We’re on the home stretch now. Literally, in my case, because Barnet is where I live.

Barnet adopted its local plan in 2025, and made much of the fact that it could deliver all the housing it needs without resorting to green belt release. The draft London Plan will come as something as a shock given that it needs to now find space for 7,000 homes of its 32,730 target on its not-insubstantial green belt.

A few years ago some jokers tried to burnish the borough’s reputation by adding an accent over the E. Well, we’re doing perfectly well without your fancy foreign ways, thank you very much.

Barnét was, for a time, London’s most populous borough until Croydon’s sterling housebuilding efforts took hold. The bulk (literally and figuratively) of the borough’s housing in recent years has taken place along the Edgware Road corridor. Until 2022 these were the Labour-voting wards, which is presumably why the Tory-voting planning authority was happy for the transformation to happen here. The wealthier eastern half of Barnet, lying either side of the Great North Road, has managed to resist major intensification, but that’s changing with the recent approvals for 300 homes on High Barnet Station car park and 1,500 homes on the site of the Great North Leisure Park; much to the chagrin of local residents – and the Labour-controlled planning committee which refused both applications, only to have them overturned by the Mayor of London.

Let’s start at Finchley Central, which was also subject to a bid to failed build on its car park.

Finchley Central

The last stop on the Northern Line before the eastern branch forks to Mill Hill East and High Barnet, Finchley Central station serves a bustling suburban high street and the pleasant suburban housing around it. The name Finchley Central comes from the location of the station (between East Finchley and West Finchley) rather than the area itself, which is known as Church End. This was also the name of the station until 1940 when the line was electrified.

There’s very little in the way of green belt in the vicinity of the station with the exception of Finchley Golf Club to the north west. I’ll cover this later, until Mill Hill East. Given the overlap between the two BLG stations I’m going to give Finchley Station one star to avoid double-counting, and approach that I should probably have adopted earlier but am too lazy to correct.

New homes will be coming forward here, though, just not on green belt. The Pentland Centre, a complex of office buildings and a rather unexpected lake, just off Squire’s Lane has been owned by Pentland Brands since the 1990s, but will soon be redeveloped into several hundred homes (full disclosure: my practice RCKa has been part of the team working on the concept designs). You may not have heard of Pentland, but you will have heard of some of the companies that it owns: Berghaus, Speedo, Mitre, Ellesse, Kickers. It’s an amazing UK success story, with a value of well over £4bn. And – until lockdown – was based here in Finchley. They now operate out of a swanky new office in Clerkenwell. The site was previously vineyards and a power station. In the nineteenth century it supplied 250,000 cucumbers to London. Who said that British winemaking is a recent phenomenon?

High Barnet

It’s common misconception that the settlement (which locals like to describe as a “village”) to the north of the station is called High Barnet. It’s not. The correct name is Chipping Barnet—only the station has this name, given because of its lofty position looking across London. “Chipping” sounds posh, but it actually means market. Something it no longer has. These days the market can be found on Stapylton Road, at the back of The Spires shopping centre¹.

The station itself has been subject to recent controversy, with a development proposal by TfL’s property arm Places for London and Barratt London refused planning permission in December last year. The scheme, which is scheduled to include 283 homes, was subsequently approved by the Mayor of London in May. The car park itself, which a goods yard until the 1960s, is allocated for 300 homes in the borough’s adopted Local Plan.

Further afield, there are two areas of green belt within 1,200m of the station. Parcel 394 is the playing fields for Queen Elizabeth II school, which is immediately to the north of the station. Beyond that is the King George’s Field open space. This is a 28ha area of mature woodland and meadows, created as part of a programme of new public open space established as a memorial to George V following his death in 1936. It will be a cold day in hell that those two are built on.

To the south is, confusingly, is another King George’s Field, albeit with the “V” included, but created as part of the same programme. This is the location of the ill-fated attempt by Barnet Football Club to relocate its ground from Harrow back to Underhill, its traditional home. Having abandoned its original ground to make way for the Ark Academy, the club’s owner, Tony Kleanthous, popped in a cheeky application on land he doesn’t own for a new stadium on the playing fields in question. This was refused on green belt grounds, among other things. Plus, as I mentioned, he doesn’t own the site, which tends to make building a football stadium a little challenging. These plans have now been scrapped and they’re looking for a different location.

Development around High Barnet is now, I suppose, a possibility, but the playing fields themselves are well-used and again it’s very unlikely that new homes will happen here. Plus, this entire bit of green belt is very soggy: the Dollis Brook runs west to east, and most of this land is liable to flooding. One star on the off chance that someone finds a corner of undeveloped land somewhere in the vicinity.

Mill Hill Broadway

This is the only station within Barnet’s BLG that isn’t on the Northern Line, Mill Hill Broadway is part of the Thameslink franchise which returned to public ownership in May this year. At this point Thameslink and the West Coast Mainline run parallel to the M1, which the station itself is hidden beneath.

Consent has recently been granted for a handsome new housing development on the car park to the immediate west of the station, and the only two bits of green belt close by are the grounds of St Joseph’s College, a former Catholic seminary which closed in 2006 and was promptly converted into flats (parcels 410 – 412). Although part of the Mill Hill Conservation Area, the grounds beyond the house itself don’t look particularly well maintained, with access from Lawrence Street. At 18ha in size, according to the draft densities this should be yielding more than 2,000 homes.

That’s more than can be said for parcels 357 and 358 which together comprise Mill Hill Park. This open space is bisected by the A1 (it’s all a bit ‘roady’ around here) which runs at grade, with no route across that doesn’t involve a dice with death.

Mill Hill East

Mill Hill Broadway is roady, Mill Hill East is golfy.

Of all the locations within the Barnet BLG, this is the one to look at. Mill Hill East is on the weird branch of the Northern Line where the station has only a single platform. That’s because it only has a single track. As it happens, the tunnel continues into Hertfordshire as part of an abandoned link-up with the Edgware branch, which would have continued as far as Bushey Heath. Plans were scrapped when…stop me if you’ve heard this before…the post-war introduction of green belt blocked any hope of new residential development along its length. Our hero Holden even designed a station for Bushey Heath.

Mill Hill East also the least-used station on the Northern Line. Not for long!

Immediately to the north of the station is the huge Millbrook Park development on the site of the former Inglis Barracks, which is being built out by a consortium, and will eventually provide 2,240 new homes.

Beyond the suburban neighbourhood to the south of the station lies Hendon Crem (parcel 381), plus Hendon Golf Club (parcels 379 and 380). And beyond that, Barnet Copthall leisure centre and the StoneX Stadium, home of the Saracens rugby club. With the exception of the golf club itself (3,000 homes, if they fancied it) I can’t see much chance of development happening here. The course is privately owned, mind, and stranger things have happened.

To the east lies, yes, another golf course. This is Finchley Golf Course (parcel 371), the freehold of which is owned by Barnet Council with a long lease to the club.

When the Mayor of London published his outline proposals “Towards a New London Plan” in May last year, it included a suggestion that some golf courses might be appropriated for other uses; but only those which fall under the Metropolitan Open Land designation – something that I advocated for in my Golf Belt research. The document stated that:

“However, some areas of MOL, such as certain golf courses are not accessible to the wider public and have limited biodiversity value. This undermines the purpose of the designation. These areas could be assessed to understand whether they should be released from MOL. They may be able to help to meet London’s housing and accessible open space provision (for example opening up strategic new open spaces accessible to Londoners alongside new homes).”

“Towards a New London Plan”, Mayor of London, May 2026

It seems that this idea did not make it as far as the draft document. A shame. But, given that there are so many golf courses close to the BLG stations that are instead subject to green belt protection, I wonder if this policy is intended to achieve the same result via a different route?

In the outer ring, there are swathes of open space which could witness development, particularly around the equestrian centre and the NG Mill Hill Substation. A few years ago, they tried to get consent for a huge 50MW battery storage facility either side of the existing installation. It was rejected, of course, because we don’t need electricity, or something. The lights haven’t yet gone off in Mill Hill, but it’s only a matter of time.

Totteridge & Whetstone

The penultimate station on the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line, where it follows the line of the Great North Road, the station marks the threshold between bustling suburban high street and the rural (and rich) Totteridge Lane which links the eastern and western halves of the borough.

There’s a delightful walk that leads from High Barnet all the way to the North Circular, following the Dollis Brook along shady woodland footpaths, opening out into Brook Farm space which lies to the north of the station itself. This is the closest green belt to the station.

Further west lies South Herts Golf Club (parcel 407)—one of the borough’s nine courses—which is privately owned. Given the depth of wealth in the local area, I think it highly unlikely that development will ever happen here.

At this point, it’s worth stopping to discuss bus stops, and how they factor into all of this.

The draft London Plan is somewhat enigmatic on how to calculate whether areas of green belt fall into the BLG category, with a strangely specific set of criteria that’s almost impossible to calculate without access to data that Transport for London doesn’t yet publish, as far as I can tell. It’s possible to calculate roughly where some of the bus stops are likely to be based on the travel times and timetable data (that’s what I’ve done). But information regarding the capacity of the bus stops, and whether they have a digital departure board, is not freely available. And, anyway, box PV7C says that these locations are to be “confirmed in discussion with TfL”, which isn’t very helpful when you’re trying to make a map of them.

I’m mentioning this here, because based on my calculations the entirety of Totteridge Lane falls within this category, effectively making the whole of the green belt area to south, enclosed by Mill Hill and Finchley, a potential area of development.

West Finchley

West Finchley, and its companion station at Woodside Park, are strangely located away from the Great North Road and remote from the district centre of Tally Ho Corner. Finchley Golf Course is captured by the outer ring of the West Finchley BLG, although it’s closer to Mill Hill East.

Woodside Park

One stop further along the Northern Line, Woodside Park is a pleasant suburban neighbourhood where the London Underground. This is one of the few locations where Transport for London has managed to realise a housing development on one of its car parks. In a joint venue with specialist developer Pocket Living, the former western car park has now been transformed into a distinctive red brick apartment block by HTA Design. There’s still a large car park on the other side, presumably which is also slated for redevelopment at some point soon.

The only green belt here lies to the west, within the 1,200m ring of the BLG. We’re back into Mill Hill East territory, although the woodland at parcels 415 and 419 which flank the Folly Brook are not protected habitats, it does form part of the Woodridge local nature reserve. We discussed parcel 420 previously, although the northern part of this is closer to Woodside Park than Mill Hill East. The fields to the south of Folly Brook could, in theory, be transformed into housing, but the route through to the station is slightly tortuous. Hard to see that this would be a good place for new homes; and certainly not at the kind of densities the draft London Plan requires.

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Northwood BLG

Northwood BLG includes five stations straddling the boundary of the London Boroughs of Hillingdon and Harrow. The Hillingdon stations – Pinner, Northwood Hills and Northwood itself – are all located along the Metropolitan line, with Harrow’s, including Headstone Lane and Hatch End, on the Lioness Line that terminates at Watford Junction. We’re right on the edge of London, here, where the suburban fabric is broken up by splotches of open green space, much of which is designated metropolitan green belt.

Hillingdon has the highest green belt housing target of all the London boroughs, both in terms of absolute numbers (14,750) and proportion (two thirds). All in, there are nine BLG stations in Hillingdon, but only two in Harrow, around which it needs to find space for 3,150 homes.

Hatch End

Hatch End is the final station on the Lioness line before it heads off into Hertfordshire. It’s home to the recently-completed Harrow Arts Centre, a Grade II listed complex including a new building by Chris Dyson Architects.

Hatch End itself creates a peninsula of suburbia which projects into the south Hertfordshire green belt. To the south (parcel 127) is a large area of open space which the River Pinn wraps around. We’ll come onto this when we visit Headstone Lane. To the west (parcel 128) is a large single freehold that sits just beyond the Pinner Rugby Club. This looks to be council-owned: the northern part is listed as Sylvia Avenue Open Space, and while it’s not protected, local volunteers have identified it as having ecological value. The London Loop runs right through its middle.

Jumping across the railway line and you’ll find another bit of distinctive suburbia, where the metroland expansion was cut short by WWII. The Avenue, which runs northwards in parallel to the railway track, simply stops dead. There’s not even a house at the end of the road; the highway finishes and gives way to open countryside. Parcels 123, 124 and 125 are all clearly bits of open space that were earmarked for development prior to 1947, but the homes never got there. It’s a bit of a trek from the station, mind.

The land in the eastern periphery of the BLG (parcels 117 and 118) are occupied by Thrale Farm, a still-active business despite the best efforts of the local residents’ association. I particularly enjoyed their recent objection to proposals for a new barn on the site, claiming that the application “reiterates repeated attempts to put the maximum commercial footprint on the site using ‘agriculture’ as justification to qualify for permitted development on the greenbelt.”

Aah, yes: agriculture. Can’t have any of that in the green belt, can we?

At least if the landowners decide that tilling the soil is no longer commercially viable, they now have a chance to grow homes instead.

Headstone Lane

Headstone Lane either deserves four stars or one star, depending on what happens with Pinner Park Farm, a massive open space immediately to the west of the station (parcels 136 and 137).

Established as a deer park in 1273 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, this is nearly 100 hectares of land that appears to be in use as a dairy farm, although the only cows I’ve managed to find are on the signpost on George V Avenue. Once owned by a company called Hall & Sons, the business was sold to Express Dairies in the early nineties. It seems that the London Borough of Harrow still owns the freehold.

To my earlier point: this is, by far, the biggest opportunity for housing development in Harrow. Don’t forget that, somewhere, it has to release green belt enough to 3,150 homes. There’s way more space in Pinner Park Farm alone to meet this target: building within 480m of the station alone would get to nearly 3,000 homes and still leave over 70 hectares for bovine-related activities. Whether the council has the appetite for this remains to be seen. We await their public statement.

Northwood Hills

Northwood Hills station opened in 1933 and was named following a public competition. God knows what the losing entries were, if this was the best of the lot.

Areas for new green belt housing are thin on the ground, with two golf courses – Northwood and Haste Hill – to the west, forming part of a larger area of open space which includes Northwood Cemetery and Ruislip Woods. There are a handful of smaller sites which could accommodate development, but it is lacking obvious large-scale opportunities. That is, apart from Haste Hill Golf Course which conjoins the privately-owned Northwood Golf Club. Most of the course sits within the outer ring of the station BLG.

Immediately to the south of the station is an area of green belt that’s entirely enveloped by housing. This includes the Joel Street Allotments (parcel 266), a builders’ merchant (of course), and a handful of fields with an unclear purpose (parcels 207 and 208). There’s space here for around a thousand homes.

Pinner Golf Course lies to the north east of the station, but only a small corner overlaps the BLG zone, and it’s over the border in Harrow. To the east – also in Harrow – is the Pinner Hill conservation area. It’s worth mentioning because the entire housing estate, which was built in the 1920s, is within green belt. It’s the location of Sans Souci, Von Ribbentrop’s home that might or might not have been a Nazi observation centre.

Parcels 265 and 266 on the Hillingdon side of the boundary appear to be sports grounds, but I can’t see what institution they belong to.

Northwood

Julian Barnes was born in Northwood, and his first book—Metroland—is semi-autobiographical, based on his experiences of growing up in the area. In an interview with the Guardian he described it as a “fake place“, which seems a bit unfair. When you’re running competitions to name new neighbourhoods, though, I know what he means.

Northwood’s green belt lies to the southwest, and most of it is golf course. Northwood Golf Club owns a large part of it, with a tiny corner (parcel 276) a former gravel pits, now a local nature reserve.

Pinner

Our final stop in Harrow is Pinner, which first appeared as Pinnora in the thirteenth century and means, apparently “surrounded by trees”. Famous for being the birthplace of Elton John, this is Harrow’s most westerly station, a stop on the Metropolitan Line which reached here in 1885. It was the terminus of the line until it was extended to Rickmansworth a couple of years later.

The built-up area of Hillingdon lies to the southwest, and the only green belt within 1,200m of the station itself is the bottom end of Pinner Park Farm, which we discussed at length above. Parcel 136 is the separate freehold to the south of the George V Avenue, which itself is bisected by the River Pinn as it turns towards central London. At over 23ha in size, there’s space here for over 1,000 homes at the kinds of densities required by the draft London Plan.

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Upminster BLG

Back to east London for the final time now, with just two stations comprising the BLG: Upminster Bridge and Upminster, the final two stops of the District Line. There are two principal areas of potential development here, with a large area of green belt to the north of the station pair, equidistant from each; and a further patch of agricultural land to the southeast of Upminster Station.

Upminster Bridge

The bridge in the name comes from the River Ingrebourne, and the crossing over it. Just to the west of the station itself, which is served by the District and Hammersmith & City Line, is where the London Underground and Liberty Lines converge. The river runs north to south, meandering through Upminster Golf Course, which forms the eastern part of the green belt close to the station.

There’s a single large freehold at parcel 142 which looks like virgin land and is criss-crossed by public rights of way. Most of the site is located within the 480m – 1,200m band and, in theory, could accommodate as many as 2,000 homes according to the proposed London Plan densities.

Like most of these types of large site, achieving this would require development of up to five storeys which seems anomalous compared to the two-storey suburban housing that predominates in London’s fringes. The draft Plan expects buildings of this scale, which would obviously demand a high proportion of apartments which, at least for the foreseeable future, housing developers are unable or unwilling to provide. Whether these competing demands can be successfully reconciled is going to be one of the most pressing challenges of the coming decade; and, no doubt, will be one of key topics of debate during the consultation.

Upminster

To the north west of the station lies Upminster Golf Course (parcel 144). At 40ha and 18 holes, it’s one of nine courses in Havering, and is entirely within the 1,200m zone from the station. If sold off for development, 4,000 homes could be built here. Consolidating parcels 142 (see Upminster Bridge) and 144 could get to well over half of the borough’s entire housing target. There are multiple routes into the course from surrounding roads, all within a short walk from the station. I’m skeptical about the chances of the golf course being developed, though.

In fact, these two parcels of land are really the only two options when it comes to green belt release. There’s a triangle of green belt to the south east, too, but this forms part of the Cranham Conservation Area – unusually large, and peculiar because it covers predominantly open fields rather than built fabric.

Closest to the station centre is the Coopers’ Company and Coborn School, a sixth-form academy which specialises in performing arts and sports. The school and its sports fields are at parcels 152 and 154. There’s an undeveloped site immediately to the east of this which looks ripe for a small housing development, although it’s still within the Conservation Area. Alumni include, er, Rylan Clark.

Slap bang in the middle of the Conservation Area is the Grade II listed All Saints church, which the designation is intended to preserve. James Oglethorpe, who founded the state of Georgia but later advocated for the abolition of slavery, anti-colonialism and Jewish naturalisation, is buried here. He’s got a fort named after him, as well as the town around it, which seems like a decent memorial for a pretty decent chap.

The chances of building very much in way of new homes here, though, seems limited at best.

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West Ruislip BLG

The last two stations on our desktop jaunt around London’s pastoral periphery take us back to Hillingdon. As I mentioned in East of Ickenham, why these stations don’t fall within that BLG is a mystery. There are big overlaps between them; and they share Tube lines, too. Anyway: here we are.

Ruislip

Why is Ruislip even included at all? I don’t get it. There’s hardly any green space here at all, with a small triangle of green belt formed by the intersection of the Central and Metropolitan / Piccadilly Lines. This appears to be football pitches, and because of the rail infrastructure, there’s limited access to the wider area apart from to the east in the direction of the station.

To the south, on the other side of the Central Line and London Underground’s Ruislip Depot is a large area of scrubland (parcel 233) which looks to be part of the depot freehold, and presumably in TfL’s ownership. We covered this in Ickenham, though, which is closer by.

Finally, to the west, is Ruislip Golf Course, but we’ll find out about this when we visit West Ruislip which is right next door. So let’s move swiftly on to that, as you must be getting bored by now. I know I am.

West Ruislip

Ignoring the green belt parcels we’ve covered in previous sections, the only unique area of potential development is Ruislip Golf Course (parcels 235 – 237, 243 and 244), which occupies most of the peninsula of green belt extending into metroland.

Climbing aboard a Central Line train at West Ruislip gives you access to the longest continuous tube journey on the entire network. Travel to Epping Forest without changing trains, and you’ll have covered a total of 37 miles.

A noticeable feature of this neighbourhood is the massive HS2 worksite, running parallel to the Chiltern Mainline. This is where the new railway descends into the tunnel section as it heads into central London. This is known as the West Ruislip Portal.

It is for this reason that the golf course was closed in early 2022. With space required to construct the Northolt tunnel, Hillingdon Council agreed to shut the club down, with the 18 holes to be reduced to nine when it eventually reopens. The site was sold to HS2, which now has control over its fate.

Is the GLA’s plan to preempt this by allocating the station as part of a BLG? Given that the course is on the doorstep of the station, it makes perfect sense that this become a location for homes. It makes sense to me, anyway. Simply by rounding off the parcels nearest the station there’s space for 3,000 of them. Expanding development westwards to Breakspear Road South could yield another 4,000.

Now it starts to make sense.

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Coming Home

The Broad Locations of Growth are an entirely new concept in London’s spatial plan. Unlike Opportunity Areas, these do not have distinct geographical boundaries. They are accompanied by highly-specific requirements for landscape and open space, residential densities and building heights, in areas which clearly need to do more to help deliver the homes that London needs. But as the mapping shows, some of the stations identified as part of this policy have almost no developable green belt anywhere near them. The

Whether they are compatible with the market, though, is a different matter. Because of the challenges associated with high-density residential development—even when it falls below the High Risk Building threshold—housebuilders remain reluctant to deliver much more than family houses, particularly in suburban locations where residential values tend to make apartments unviable. As we’ve seen above, London’s entire green belt target of 56,100 homes can only really be delivered from several dozen parcels of land, and whoever is in control of these effectively holds the keys to the kingdom.

Whatever you think about density, the values required by the proposed Plan are extraordinarily high. There are very few bits of London which get anywhere near the 90 – 160dph range proposed. With only a small number of exceptions, this will result in an extraordinary jump in scale, with low-rise suburban housing around many stations giving way to walls of development hundreds of metres further away. How architects and masterplanners respond to this novel transition will be fascinating to see.

The Plan also proposes, more widely, a programme of infill and intensification across all well-connected neighbourhoods; not just in the BLGs. It states:

The new London Plan therefore has an important concept at its heart: making the best use of land. This means making the most of every appropriate development site for the new homes, jobs and community facilities Londoners needs. More ‘mid-rise’ buildings of up to five or six storeys rather than two will be needed, and the physical look and feel of areas will have to evolve, particularly in places with decent public transport connections. It means making the most of smaller-scale developments opportunities within established neighbourhoods, either in between existing buildings or through adapting or replacing them.

So we should be viewing the BLG locations as part of a more comprehensive plan to increase the density in areas that need it. I’ve written about how this might happen elsewhere.

The Mayor’s consultation document from 2025, Towards a New London Plan, suggested that golf courses could provide an opportunity for new homes in sustainable locations. That idea appears to have been expunged entirely from the latest draft, but perhaps a remnant of it remains. Golf courses commonly manifest as green belt protrusions into suburban neighbourhoods, as we’ve just seen at West Ruislip. This is not a unique characteristic of London: there are many examples of this phenomenon across the country. Maybe it was felt that explicitly targeting golf courses was a touch overt, and this policy is a way of achieving a similar result through the back door.

Finally, it’s also worth remembering that less than 7% of London’s metropolitan green belt is actually in London itself. The rest is under the control of the seventy-odd councils that occupy the wider region. The government’s NPPF policies, expected in September, should codify much lower (but still high) residential densities around well-connected stations across the wider region. The London Plan is doing what it can in a highly challenging political landscape. Yet a more comprehensive, coordinated strategic policy for the south east is long overdue.

After all, outside London, there’s another 1,800 square miles of metropolitan green belt to explore.

Corrections

1. 2 August 2026 Updated to reflect that I’d inadvertently assumed that Barnet Market no longer exists. It does.