The amount of green belt land likely to be released as a result of the governments grey belt policy is likely to be lower than speculation has suggested, according to the housing minister.Appearing in front of the House of Lords built environment committee on Wednesday, Matthew Pennycook said he could not say exactly how much land would be released and refused to put a target on the level of delivery expected from the grey belt, although he said it would likely be less than 10% of overall green belt.Source: MHCLG / FlickrHousing and planning minister Matthew PennycookWere only talking about releases where local authorities are unable to meet assessed housing needs through brownfield development alone, but where it does need to be released, it will be based on a local figure, and that will differ in lots of different areas.So it is not, Im afraid, as easy as plucking a sort of single digit figure out of the air.Im quite happy to say we dont think it will be a significant quantity of land, but it will be a modest amount of land that does make a difference, he said, while challenging suggestions from peers that such a limited release would not be meaningful.He also said the level of release as a total proportion of the green belt would be lower than the double-digit estimates made by organisations such as Lichfields and LandTech.I think what we could say about those sorts of figures in those ranges is they are not overlaid with the policy requirements Im talking about, he said, noting that they did not take into account the governments golden rules and other requirements of the National Planning Policy Framework.What I would say is that Im confident that we will see green belt release through grey belt in single digits in terms of a total proportion of the green belt, and thats what I mean by not significant, he said.Pennycook stressed that the purpose of the grey belt policy was to make the release of green belt land more strategic.We thought there was a smarter, strategic way to release the right parts of the green belt, he said.Pennycooks appearance came at the end of the built environment committees short inquiry into the grey belt policy, which saw the original definition of the category called into question.> Also read:From green to grey: How the grey belt could steer development towards the wrong places> Also read:NPPF: Government drops 50% affordable housing requirement for grey belt sitesWitnesses suggested that the definition of grey belt lacked clarity and would lead to confusion among planners and a surge in legal challenges.Such concerns resulted in the government tightening up their definition of the term in the final version of the NPPF, published last week.Pennycook told the committee that the terms that the new definition are based on havecommon sense meaning in the courts.I dont think it introduces a level [] of ambiguity that is not present in other parts of the National Planning Policy Framework, I think its quite clear what the definition is, he said.The final version of the NPPF also saw the government drop its 50% affordability requirement, replacing it with a 15% premium on local requirements.Explaining the change, Pennycook said the previous approach would have made a huge swathe of sites in the Midlands and the North unviable.Quizzed on why the government had not set out interim targets for achieving its overall aim of building 1.5m homes across the parliament, Pennycook blamed the inheritance from the previous government.If we had inherited from the previous government a steady state of supply at a high level. We could have said we intend to continue with that steady state of supply or increase it by a margin amount, he said.>Also read:Lack of clarity over grey belt definition will lead to confusion and legal challenges, Lords told>Also read:Will Labours grey belt plans boost housebuilding or turn out to be an ill-defined gimmick?What we have instead inherited is a very sharp downturn in supply, I go so far as to say a collapse in affordable housing supply in many parts of the country. So we are in a real trough.He acknowledged that the 1.5m target was incredibly difficult, suggesting that a lower target of 1.1m would have been very easy to deliver given the scale of the governments planning reforms.We decided not to do that because I dont think it would have been commensurate with the scale of the housing crisis we see across the country, he said.Pennycook also spoke about the thoroughly depleted nature of local planning departments, which he blamed on historic cuts.Im slightly Im sort of straying outside my brief but when you sort of confront the challenges of the housing and planning system that weve inherited, you pretty much bump up against the fact that the state has been hollowed out in several areas that directly impact upon the functioning of that system, he said.