The Farming in London’s Green Belt, Environment Committee Report recommended that you should explore, with London Councils, outer London local authorities or other collaborators, the potential to operate an accessible database of agricultural land ownership and availability. Please can you provide an update on the work done to deliver this recommendation?

Collaboration on strategic cross-boundary matters such as Green Belt takes place through the preparation of Local Plans and my officers engage positively and closely with authorities to support this. The strong protection for London’s Green Belt in the London Plan provides the appropriate framework for protecting and enhancing positive uses of the Green Belt, including farming, into the future.

I am not planning to take forward the recommendation to establish an agricultural land ownership and availability database. Developing such a database would be a major undertaking which would require considerable resource to manage and maintain.