SAVE OUR COUNTRYSIDE
To my mind, the most important part of the Campaign to Protect Rural England’s mission is that we must ‘stand up for the countryside so that it can continue to sustain, enchant and inspire future generations’. Because this task is so important to me, I think we have to live in a state of permanent red alert about the countryside future generations will inherit. Each generation feels this, but the countryside faces extraordinary challenges at the moment.
The environment is foremost in people’s minds, not just because disasters like the recent ooding and ash dieback disease increase our consciousness of what is at risk, but because we’re hearing government pronouncements that betray a wider pattern of neglect for the landscape. Fortunately, this neglect is completely out of step with public opinion; a recent poll commissioned by CPRE and our partners found that 81 per cent of people want to see the natural environment and its wildlife protected at all costs, while 84 per cent feel that the natural environment boosts their quality of life.
Despite all this, we are seeing the coalition contradicting David Cameron’s ambition to lead the greenest government ever. In a short space of time they have put at risk all kinds of things that have been time-honoured: our spiritual connection to woodland and wilderness (the attempted sello of our forests and dithering response to ash dieback disease, and the new proposals in the Growth And Infrastructure Bill to downgrade protection for national parks) and hard-won protection for green belts and the wider countryside.
That we have a chancellor who regards this protection as red tape, is a huge concern. He has talked about making it easier for councils to build on green belts, despite pledges from the Secretary of State responsible, Eric Pickles, that ‘the green belt plays a vital role in stopping urban sprawl – and we will protect it’.
Planning Minister Nick Boles has rea rmed this commitment, but the statistics show that George Osborne is getting his way: CPRE’s branch network has identi ed plans for 80,000 new homes on green belt land, and research by The Daily Telegraph found that 42 local councils have been pressured into removing protection from 9,000 acres of green belt.
As well as loosening our green belts, Osborne has decided that a new wave of road building is the best way to reboot the economy. His autumn statement included £1bn for road-building schemes, to be delivered by unelected and unaccountable Local Enterprise Partnerships. These shadowy bodies are often led by business groups ‘pushing for new road building to support their plans for green eld housing estates and business parks’, according to the Campaign for Better Transport.
This strategy will simply allow road builders to steamroller local opposition and allow the tarmacking of beautiful countryside, such as the unspoilt Combe Haven valley; diggers will start building the Bexhill- Hastings link road through it this month, after Osborne prioritised £56m of funding, despite the Department for Transport’s own assessment that environmental damage would outweigh economic bene ts.
The chancellor has consistently tried to frame the planning system as an impediment to growth, but good planning has largely prevented needless urban sprawl while regenerating our cities. The Olympic Park would have been easier to build on green eld land, but the planning system steered it towards Stratford, regenerating a post-industrial wasteland and making the most of existing transport links.
The policy of prioritising such areas for development (‘brown fielf first’), introduced after years of lobbying by the CPRE, but ditched by the coalition, has saved the countryside from housing development equivalent to seven new Southamptons since 1995.
Instead, this housing has created new communities from derelict urban sites, of which we have an almost unlimited supply – currently enough for 1.5 million new homes and increasing all the time.
Now, though, Nick Boles seems determined to abandon this proven strategy, calling for developers to build on an area of open countryside two-and-a-half times the size of Greater London.
The prime minister seems content to let Osborne and Boles demolish sound planning principles, despite that his political hero, Harold Macmillan, was one of planning’s greatest advocates.
Macmillan’s personal manifesto of 1938, The Middle Way, imagined an England where growth was promoted, up to a point; constraining business by ‘public control’ measures (such as a planning system) could ensure the whole of society enjoyed the bene ts of enterprise.
A year earlier, Harold Macmillan had written to The Times to complain of the ‘farcical ineptitude’ of the Baldwin government’s decision to build a new aircraft factory (in response to German rearmament) in South East farmland when there was ready-made infrastructure and labour in the North.
David Cameron recently told the Confederation of British Industry that we need to replicate the ‘Whitehall revolution’ of the Second World War to achieve an economic recovery by ‘circumventing normal rules’.
Luckily in 1938, wiser voices, such as Harold Macmillan’s, ensured that CPRE’s chairman, Sir Patrick Abercrombie, was appointed official consultant in choosing sites for aerodromes and factories, preventing, as The Times put it, ‘the hurry and heedlessness of the hour destroying any portion of what we are aiming to preserve for all time’.
When ‘normal rules’ had to be broken, Abercrombie and CPRE acted as a clearing house to minimise the loss of vital farmland or beautiful landscapes. Now, that vital check is increasingly absent; the planning system created to provide the balance between the needs of economy, society and environment is gradually being diluted.
Countryside saving targets for housing density and reuse of brownfield sites have been scrapped and the Growth And Infrastructure Bill, currently being rushed through Parliament, will allow develop-ers to bypass the local councils: a staggering blow to local democracy from a government once obsessed with localism.
Whatever happened to Cameron’s Big Society? The definition, at last, turns out to be: ‘Your voice counts, as long as you agree with the Secretary of State’. Even that great icon of England, the village green, is under threat from the ‘growth at all costs’ culture. Incredibly, the 185 applications for new greens each year are seen as a barrier to economic growth; so much so that the new legislation will make it impossible for local people to preserve their greens if the land has been earmarked for development.
We need to find a balance between meeting the demands of a modern, highly urbanised culture – homes, transport, energy and employment – with the protection of the landscape that provides the bedrock that underlies absolutely everything.
The countryside provides the food that sustains us, the tranquillity and open space we rely on for escape and enjoyment, and the soil that absorbs floodwater and stores carbon. It is so profoundly precious. And not least for its beauty, which feels eternal, having been subtly and ingeniously made by us over successive generations. When we talk about protecting the countryside we are really defending our national heritage; the English landscape is our great collaborative masterpiece.
When defending this great collective achievement, we really are ‘all in it together’; each one of us is responsible for its stewardship. Those of us with a deep bond with the landscape – led by organisations like CPRE – must help others discover the same feeling of home, of belonging, of connection. We need to give everyone – and especially young people who may have never been to the countryside – the chance to get to know and understand it better; to learn where their food comes from, where they can hear a nightingale sing, or how they can identify an ash tree. Most of all, we need to help them to discover this fantastic resource for their own enjoyment.
With that sense of discovery comes a sense of ownership, and then the responsibility to look after it so that they can hand it on in turn. A growing familiarity with the countryside also creates a natural desire to share their favourite parts of it: a favourite walk, the perfect place for quiet contemplation, or even a poem inspired by an arresting view. I want CPRE to help people to share these discoveries in their communities – including online, so that there is not just a sense of new connection, but also interaction.
If we fail in this challenge to connect people to their countryside, the government’s mantra that the environment is the enemy of the economy will lead to apathy. By a thousand cuts, we will be left with a countryside so fragmented that it will be impossible to find a view unimpeded by pylons or warehouses.
According to the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, up to 14.6 per cent of England is classed as urban, which sounds a relatively manageable amount until one learns that the sights and sounds of urbanisation actually intrude on over 50 per cent of the country. It does not seem too much to ask that half of England remains truly rural, but we need everyone to be asking for it: including you.
Please consider supporting us; by becoming a CPRE member you’ll be joining a movement that will make the prime minister and his government think again. Together, we can convince them that new development on greenfields must be a last resort. They must learn to respect the landscape, our great national asset, while regenerating our town centres and brownfield sites.
After all, once the housing estates, roads, pylons and business parks start to be built, there’s no going back. Our meadows, hills and valleys will be scarred forever. This gamble on growth simply does not warrant the destruction of beloved countryside or the much-loved green spaces that make such a difference to our communities. Help us defend the countryside, so that England’s greatest gift to the wide world can sustain, enchant and inspire your family for generations.
The environment is foremost in people’s minds, not just because disasters like the recent ooding and ash dieback disease increase our consciousness of what is at risk, but because we’re hearing government pronouncements that betray a wider pattern of neglect for the landscape. Fortunately, this neglect is completely out of step with public opinion; a recent poll commissioned by CPRE and our partners found that 81 per cent of people want to see the natural environment and its wildlife protected at all costs, while 84 per cent feel that the natural environment boosts their quality of life.
Despite all this, we are seeing the coalition contradicting David Cameron’s ambition to lead the greenest government ever. In a short space of time they have put at risk all kinds of things that have been time-honoured: our spiritual connection to woodland and wilderness (the attempted sello of our forests and dithering response to ash dieback disease, and the new proposals in the Growth And Infrastructure Bill to downgrade protection for national parks) and hard-won protection for green belts and the wider countryside.
That we have a chancellor who regards this protection as red tape, is a huge concern. He has talked about making it easier for councils to build on green belts, despite pledges from the Secretary of State responsible, Eric Pickles, that ‘the green belt plays a vital role in stopping urban sprawl – and we will protect it’.
Planning Minister Nick Boles has rea rmed this commitment, but the statistics show that George Osborne is getting his way: CPRE’s branch network has identi ed plans for 80,000 new homes on green belt land, and research by The Daily Telegraph found that 42 local councils have been pressured into removing protection from 9,000 acres of green belt.
As well as loosening our green belts, Osborne has decided that a new wave of road building is the best way to reboot the economy. His autumn statement included £1bn for road-building schemes, to be delivered by unelected and unaccountable Local Enterprise Partnerships. These shadowy bodies are often led by business groups ‘pushing for new road building to support their plans for green eld housing estates and business parks’, according to the Campaign for Better Transport.
This strategy will simply allow road builders to steamroller local opposition and allow the tarmacking of beautiful countryside, such as the unspoilt Combe Haven valley; diggers will start building the Bexhill- Hastings link road through it this month, after Osborne prioritised £56m of funding, despite the Department for Transport’s own assessment that environmental damage would outweigh economic bene ts.
The chancellor has consistently tried to frame the planning system as an impediment to growth, but good planning has largely prevented needless urban sprawl while regenerating our cities. The Olympic Park would have been easier to build on green eld land, but the planning system steered it towards Stratford, regenerating a post-industrial wasteland and making the most of existing transport links.
The policy of prioritising such areas for development (‘brown fielf first’), introduced after years of lobbying by the CPRE, but ditched by the coalition, has saved the countryside from housing development equivalent to seven new Southamptons since 1995.
Instead, this housing has created new communities from derelict urban sites, of which we have an almost unlimited supply – currently enough for 1.5 million new homes and increasing all the time.
Now, though, Nick Boles seems determined to abandon this proven strategy, calling for developers to build on an area of open countryside two-and-a-half times the size of Greater London.
The prime minister seems content to let Osborne and Boles demolish sound planning principles, despite that his political hero, Harold Macmillan, was one of planning’s greatest advocates.
Macmillan’s personal manifesto of 1938, The Middle Way, imagined an England where growth was promoted, up to a point; constraining business by ‘public control’ measures (such as a planning system) could ensure the whole of society enjoyed the bene ts of enterprise.
A year earlier, Harold Macmillan had written to The Times to complain of the ‘farcical ineptitude’ of the Baldwin government’s decision to build a new aircraft factory (in response to German rearmament) in South East farmland when there was ready-made infrastructure and labour in the North.
David Cameron recently told the Confederation of British Industry that we need to replicate the ‘Whitehall revolution’ of the Second World War to achieve an economic recovery by ‘circumventing normal rules’.
Luckily in 1938, wiser voices, such as Harold Macmillan’s, ensured that CPRE’s chairman, Sir Patrick Abercrombie, was appointed official consultant in choosing sites for aerodromes and factories, preventing, as The Times put it, ‘the hurry and heedlessness of the hour destroying any portion of what we are aiming to preserve for all time’.
When ‘normal rules’ had to be broken, Abercrombie and CPRE acted as a clearing house to minimise the loss of vital farmland or beautiful landscapes. Now, that vital check is increasingly absent; the planning system created to provide the balance between the needs of economy, society and environment is gradually being diluted.
Countryside saving targets for housing density and reuse of brownfield sites have been scrapped and the Growth And Infrastructure Bill, currently being rushed through Parliament, will allow develop-ers to bypass the local councils: a staggering blow to local democracy from a government once obsessed with localism.
Whatever happened to Cameron’s Big Society? The definition, at last, turns out to be: ‘Your voice counts, as long as you agree with the Secretary of State’. Even that great icon of England, the village green, is under threat from the ‘growth at all costs’ culture. Incredibly, the 185 applications for new greens each year are seen as a barrier to economic growth; so much so that the new legislation will make it impossible for local people to preserve their greens if the land has been earmarked for development.
We need to find a balance between meeting the demands of a modern, highly urbanised culture – homes, transport, energy and employment – with the protection of the landscape that provides the bedrock that underlies absolutely everything.
The countryside provides the food that sustains us, the tranquillity and open space we rely on for escape and enjoyment, and the soil that absorbs floodwater and stores carbon. It is so profoundly precious. And not least for its beauty, which feels eternal, having been subtly and ingeniously made by us over successive generations. When we talk about protecting the countryside we are really defending our national heritage; the English landscape is our great collaborative masterpiece.
When defending this great collective achievement, we really are ‘all in it together’; each one of us is responsible for its stewardship. Those of us with a deep bond with the landscape – led by organisations like CPRE – must help others discover the same feeling of home, of belonging, of connection. We need to give everyone – and especially young people who may have never been to the countryside – the chance to get to know and understand it better; to learn where their food comes from, where they can hear a nightingale sing, or how they can identify an ash tree. Most of all, we need to help them to discover this fantastic resource for their own enjoyment.
With that sense of discovery comes a sense of ownership, and then the responsibility to look after it so that they can hand it on in turn. A growing familiarity with the countryside also creates a natural desire to share their favourite parts of it: a favourite walk, the perfect place for quiet contemplation, or even a poem inspired by an arresting view. I want CPRE to help people to share these discoveries in their communities – including online, so that there is not just a sense of new connection, but also interaction.
If we fail in this challenge to connect people to their countryside, the government’s mantra that the environment is the enemy of the economy will lead to apathy. By a thousand cuts, we will be left with a countryside so fragmented that it will be impossible to find a view unimpeded by pylons or warehouses.
According to the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, up to 14.6 per cent of England is classed as urban, which sounds a relatively manageable amount until one learns that the sights and sounds of urbanisation actually intrude on over 50 per cent of the country. It does not seem too much to ask that half of England remains truly rural, but we need everyone to be asking for it: including you.
Please consider supporting us; by becoming a CPRE member you’ll be joining a movement that will make the prime minister and his government think again. Together, we can convince them that new development on greenfields must be a last resort. They must learn to respect the landscape, our great national asset, while regenerating our town centres and brownfield sites.
After all, once the housing estates, roads, pylons and business parks start to be built, there’s no going back. Our meadows, hills and valleys will be scarred forever. This gamble on growth simply does not warrant the destruction of beloved countryside or the much-loved green spaces that make such a difference to our communities. Help us defend the countryside, so that England’s greatest gift to the wide world can sustain, enchant and inspire your family for generations.
For more on the Campaign To Protect Rural England: www.cpre.org.uk