Latest evidence · 8 September 2026
The rural blind spot is national.
Green Belt assessments from Buckinghamshire to Kent, Surrey and Warwickshire are reaching the same extraordinary result. When the test looks only at large built-up areas and towns, the green fields around villages disappear from view.
The Buckinghamshire warning
One footnote changed the map.
AECOM prepared Buckinghamshire’s assessment under the December 2024 NPPF. At that point, heritage, habitat, landscape and flood-risk constraints in Footnote 7 could prevent land from being classified as grey belt. The August 2026 NPPF removed that exclusion from the definition.
Grey belt or provisional grey belt in the published Buckinghamshire assessment.
The share the same report says would be grey belt under that single policy change.
Land the report says would be grey belt if Footnote 7 constraints did not apply.
These figures come from section 6.2 of Buckinghamshire Council’s own Green Belt Assessment. The report also says its result is consistent with assessments elsewhere.
The national picture
Different counties. The same result.
This is not a local anomaly. The findings below use assessment areas, not housing allocations. Their importance lies in the pattern: the test repeatedly marks rural land as low-contribution because villages do not count in the tests for sprawl, merging or historic setting, while countryside encroachment is excluded altogether.
February 2026 assessment, tested against the August rules
83%Buckinghamshire
of the study area would be grey belt once the former Footnote 7 constraints are removed. The report says this would include 85% of land within the Chilterns National Landscape.
Buckinghamshire GBA, section 6.2 ↗Green Belt Assessment, August 2026
96%Guildford
of assessment areas, 551 out of 575, did not strongly contribute to purposes A, B or D. The report identifies 92% of Guildford’s Green Belt by area as grey belt.
Guildford Green Belt Assessment 2026 ↗Green Belt Assessment, 2025
92%Sevenoaks
of assessment areas were identified as provisional grey belt. Buckinghamshire’s AECOM report cites this as a comparable result from another rural authority.
Comparator cited by Buckinghamshire AECOM ↗Green Belt Assessment, 2025
99%Tonbridge & Malling
of assessment areas were identified as provisional grey belt. The authority published updated Stage 1 and Stage 2 assessments in 2026.
Tonbridge & Malling Local Plan evidence ↗Stage 1 assessment, 2026
MostRugby
of the borough was identified as provisional grey belt because the land is distant from a large built-up area or a town. That is the rural blind spot in plain sight.
Comparator cited by Buckinghamshire AECOM ↗Why the numbers are so high
The Test turns a blind eye to villages.
The NPPF says villages are not large built-up areas, so village sprawl is not tested.
Green fields separating villages are accorded no value.
Safeguarding the countryside from encroachment is not part of the grey-belt definition.
The test protects the setting and character of historic towns, not historic villages.
Sound the Rural ROAR
Make this evidence impossible to ignore.
Ask your council to join the Rural Alliance for Planning Change, or write to your MP and demand the immediate suspension of the grey-belt test for villages.