Open Letter to Councillor Fran Belbin
Following Councillor Fran Belbin's visit to Green Belt sites in S35, S13 and S12, the Sheffield Green Belt Alliance has written to the Leader of Sheffield City Council asking her to publish the questions she took away from the visit, the answers she receives from the planning team, and the advice behind them.
The letter sets that request against more than 470 days of unanswered questions from affected communities, and asks why Sheffielders were never consulted again when the Local Plan strategy changed to include substantial Green Belt release.
Dear Councillor Belbin,
On Saturday 8 August you and Councillor Angela Argenzio spent the day in S35, S13 and S12, visiting the Green Belt this Plan would release and meeting the people who would be affected by its development. You told The Star you were "hugely sympathetic", that seeing the sites "builds your empathy", and that residents had been "well organised, well informed and really considerate of each other".
We thank you for coming. Since the 14 sites were announced in April 2025, it is the first time a Leader of this Council has stood on the land with us.
The Star reports that you and Councillor Argenzio left with a "long list of questions" for the planning team.
We hope you get answers from them; we have been putting our questions and concerns to the team for over 470 days. In May 2025 the reply was that "the Leader and Planning team haven't got the capacity to respond to each individual question". Clive Betts MP told the examination that officers declined to attend public meetings in S12 and S13, and that written questions sent afterwards came back as "we really haven't got time to deal with these, sorry".
At Full Council in February 2026 your predecessor told the chamber that "senior Council officers have advised" that questions of detail about the Local Plan should be dealt with through the examination process. That answer was then given to four public questions in succession. Councillor Martin Smith called it "a complete U-turn on previous commitments" and reminded the chamber that Lowcock found a lack of openness had eroded public trust.
But the damage to trust goes beyond unanswered questions. In 2020 the Council's own Issues and Options consultation opened by acknowledging the answer Sheffield had given in 2015: people "don't want to see building on Sheffield's countryside and the Green Belt". Option A showed that the full 40,000-home requirement could be met without releasing Green Belt.
Yet when the Inspectors later described Green Belt release as "a significant departure from the spatial strategy", the Council did not go back to Regulation 18 - the stage at which the public is asked what the strategy should be. Instead the Council moved straight to voting on which sites to release, not whether to release any at all. Sheffielders answered that question when it was asked, and the strategy was changed without us being asked again.
That vote was "all-or-nothing": accept the additional Green Belt sites, or risk the Plan. Officers advise and draft the Plan; councillors decide and are accountable for it. That accountability is harder to exercise when what arrives is a package to accept or reject rather than alternatives members can test and change.
That same binary choice is being put to the city: you have warned that "rejecting the Plan risks a new, higher housing target being imposed that would require the inclusion of even more green belt land". That may be an argument for adopting the Plan, but threatening harm elsewhere in Sheffield is not a justification for harming the communities in S35, S13 and S12.
You left our sites with a list of questions for the planning team. Some of ours are over 470 days old. Publish your questions, the replies, and the advice behind them. Then Sheffielders can see for themselves who is writing this Plan.
Yours sincerely,
Sheffield Green Belt Alliance