Last week, a panel of experts speaking at the RESI conference in Newport, Wales, said that political dithering and delays over calls to build homes on green belt land were hurting our economy.

Dr Kristian Niemietz, senior research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “We are deluding ourselves. The brownfield argument is one used by the Nimby lobby. If you build at current densities you can in theory build 1.5m homes on brownfield land, but some of it is prohibitively expensive to decontaminate, some of it is in the wrong places, and elsewhere it makes more sense to use it for other things. The figure has been cooked up.”

Taylor Wimpey’s planning director said that the planning system had been freed up following the introduction of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) but said more needed to be done.

Jennie Daly, planning director at Taylor Wimpey, said: “There’s land within the green belt well suited for development. It’s a real psychological issue for communities. Greenfield and green belt are not the same and we need to have a real debate around that. It’s hurting our economic wellbeing.”

Marc Vlessing a former investment banker who is founder of Pocket, a developer focused on creating small affordable urban flats, said: “We are going to have to bite the bullet on green belt development. We don’t actually have a policy framework for mid-market housing that allows developers to build 50-60 well connected flats. We’re not targeting market needs.”