#Planoraks Christmas Quiz 2025: Spot That Grey Belt!
Fingers on the buzzers. Paws on the buzzers. Just make sure you have something on the buzzers.
And finally... we’ve made it to December. It’s official. Winter has arrived. Coats on. Scarves wrapped up tight. We had - for about 10 minutes there, the week before last - a smattering of sludgy sleet that my kids insist on calling “snow”. But all of us can feel that chill in the air. It’s very much hot chocolate season. And I’m at least 3 Pret turkey sandwiches into the groove now, and each one tastes somehow better than the last. How do they do it? Christmas lights have now been twinkling in the high street for at least (it feels like) 3 months - an outrage to be interrogated in another blog post.
And here we are - festive and chilly #planoraks - waiting for that greatest December tradition of all: yet another new set of national planning policies to talk about later this month when the next NPPF consultation draft hits us. And talk we will. Talk we must.
It’s even rumoured - whisper it quietly - that some of these new policies are on the short-list for that annual highlight of the Yuletide planning-blog-related showbiz calendar [drumroll…] the 2025 #Planorak awards. 🏆. The rumour-mill whirrs, obviously. But come on - you wouldn’t expect any spoilers this early. Would you? Would you? We’ll have to wait and see. The judges are famously capricious.
Meanwhile, I offer you: a quiz. A #planoraks Christmas quiz, no less. A quiz with an awful lot less of multiple-#planorak-award-winner Simon Jenkins than my previous quiz. In this quiz, you get 2 rounds. The prize? Bragging rights. The biggest prize of all.
So, come on down. Welcome. Get settled in. Tell us a little about yourself. And now… focus. Fingers on buzzers. Quizzes are no laughing matter.
Lights down please. Thank you. Tense music. Furrowed eyebrows.
Let’s do this…
Round 1: Spot That Grey Belt!
2025 will be remembered in the plan-o-sphere as the year that the grey belt arrived - birthed in December 2024 in the last NPPF, but crystallised in the spring’s new PPG which I wrote all about here.
Has it been a big deal? Well, the OBR thinks so. Planning reform is the thing they think will have the greatest positive impact on overall GDP of anything this government is up to. No pressure then.
So where “grey belt” actually is (obviously) matters. It can matter a lot. And you guys are planoraks. Aren’t you? You can spot grey belt when you see it. Right? You can spot it a mile away.
Well. Let’s find out…
Now, since that planing practice guidance, the Secretary of State has assessed 5 allegedly “grey belt” sites through issuing decisions in recovered appeals. And has told us what (s)he thinks about those sites. This is valuable stuff: we have 5 examples of the author of the planning practice guidance putting that self-same guidance into practice. Now. To keep it simple. The key thing to be thinking about each time is green belt “purpose (a)”. Remember that? It’s this one:
And as a refresher: here’s what the PPG says about purpose (a):
So how, in the real world, is that guidance supposed to work. When does a higgledy-piggledy red line become “incongruous” with the existing settlement pattern? What does an “extended finger” into the green belt actually look like? Which sites are grey belt, and which ones aren’t.
I am going to give you 5 sites in the green belt. Locations. And red lines. And your mission is simple. All you have to do is… [audience chants along with me]… NAME THAT GREY BELT. Are they grey belt? Or not?
Let’s do it [Countdown clock music starts…]
Site 1
Location: here.
Red line:
Site 2
Location: here.
Red (/yellowy-orange) line:
Site 3
Location: here.
Red line:
Site 4
Location: here.
Red line:
Site 5
Location: here.
Red line:
OK thank you. Right. Pens down.
How did we do? Feeling confident?
Answers time. Taking them in order:
Site 1: NOT grey belt. But approved anyway. This is the Marlow Film Studios scheme: 26.11.25 decision here. The Secretary of State decided that here we have the kind of incongruous pattern of development that leads to a “strong” contribution to purpose (a):
Site 2: GREY BELT. This is the Sky Studios site in Borehamwood: 22.9.25 decision here. The parties and the Inspector all agreed this site made no strong contribution to the relevant green belt purposes, and the Secretary of State agreed. Permission was granted.
Site 3: GREY BELT. But permission refused anyway! This is the Holyport Film Studios site outside Maidenhead: 6.6.25 decision here. The Secretary of State decided that Holyport is not a “large built-up area”, and that the scheme would not “read as part of the urban sprawl of Maidenhead”. So this was a grey belt site. But the appeal failed, in part because the Secretary of State decided there was no need for it, and the location is unsustainable.
Site 4: GREY BELT. This is the Iver data centre: 9.7.25 decision here. Permission allowed. This is a particularly interesting one because you have the Secretary of State overruling his inspector on purpose (a) to reach a conclusion that the site comprises grey belt:
Site 5: GREY BELT. This is the Abbotts Langley data centre: 12.5.25 decision here. Permission allowed. The Secretary of State decided that: Abbotts Langley is not a “large built-up area”, and in any event the site is well contained by the M25.
How did you get on? A couple of mini-takeaways to chew on:
Not always obvious, is it, at least from the red-line, where the decision will end up on whether a site is “incongruous” or not with the existing pattern of development? Of course, unless the site’s next to or near a “large built-up area”, “incongruity” doesn’t matter in the first place.
Getting to “grey belt” is not always a passport to a planning permission (see e.g. Site 3).
Conversely, not getting to grey belt isn’t always the death knell for your scheme (see e.g. Site 1). You always have the fallback of the balance at §153 NPPF, i.e. do your scheme’s benefits clearly outweigh its harms so as to amount to very special circumstances.
Anyhow. That’s enough of that. Now for a bit of fun…
Round 2: “Objection, your honour!”
To commemorate 2025 - the year when a company literally launched a tool to harness AI for that loftiest of human endeavours - to help people come up with reasons to object to things - here are a list of 10 objections to schemes that now exist. Schemes you may have heard about. Or even visited.
But… here’s the question: what schemes were they actually objecting to? So. Read the objection. Fingers on the buzzers. And you tell me just what exactly the people were trying to rail against (and without any AI to assist them - old school).
OK. Ready?
Here we go:
A “mast of iron gymnasium apparatus, incomplete, confused and deformed”… any ideas? You can get this. OK… time up. Here we are. It’s the one and only - a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one of the world’s most visited and adored buildings: the Eiffel Tower.
A “harborside monstrosity… a disintegrating circus tent”. Seems harsh? Maybe. For another site now recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site: the iconic Sydney Opera House.
A “bizarre monument to extravagance and hubris tricked out with weird yellow spikes like some kind of intergalactic mine”…. Come on, that’s an easy one. Getting warmer? Radiohead play there now: it’s that monument to New Labour-ism, the Millennium Dome.
“One of the most hideous buildings in the world.”… from George Orwell no less. Yes. Where else. Another UNESCO World Heritage Site: it’s Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia.
A “museum version of McDonald’s”… any luck? It could only be… the Guggenheim in Bilbao.
A “shard of glass through the heart of historic London”…. Come on. That’s a gimme: here. It’s Renzo Piano’s “Shard of Glass”.
“Grand and intolerable new buildings, the costly confusion, the triumphant vulgarity, the awful materialism”…. any ideas? Yep. It’s the city of love itself. Paris.
“Improper to the prevailing sentiment of an age so enlightened”… you guessed it, yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site. The seat of our nation’s democracy. None other than: the Houses of Parliament.
“The people here have no taste, and no feeling for [architecture], however much they may brag and bluster.”… oh yes, site of some iconic Christmas lights, and a very well used Apple Store… it’s London’s Regent Street.
An “oil refinery”, a “gas factory”, and a “monstrosity”… it’s that Renzo Piano again. The Pompidou Centre in Paris.
Bonus round - “a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting.” That would be…… the King, no less. Giving us his pithy take. On the now Grade II* listed Royal National Theatre on London’s South Bank.
Congratulations on your scores on the doors. Enjoy those hard-won bragging rights. And stay well, #planoraks. Cherish those xmas sandwiches. Wrap up warm. And don’t forget to get your glad rags pressed and your shoes polished, because it won’t be long now until we have (a) another new draft NPPF to talk about, and more importantly (b) the #Planoraks award ceremony to attend.
And, here’s the thing - just like last year: you’re all invited. Until then, and through the chaos, do your level best to #keeponplanning.
