Planning to ignore you?

The Government’s Planning Green Paper, published in December 2001, marked the most fundamental review of the land use planning system for more than 50 years. Planning plays a vital role in protecting the countryside from urban sprawl and in encouraging urban regeneration.

While welcoming some of the proposals in the document, CPRE has major concerns about the Government’s intentions. Nationally CPRE has been mobilising public responses in defence of better planning rules and the rights of local people to be consulted on major planning issues. (Click here for what we said in December 2001.)

Recent ministerial changes in the government, following the resignation of Stephen Byers, offers us an opportunity to highlight our concerns about some of the implications of the proposals. At a national level, CPRE is keen to meet the relevant new ministers.

A special website has been set up by CPRE, Friends of the Earth, Transport 2000 and Restore UK to provide more information and allow people to make their views known.

“Cambridgeshire’s biggest challenge”
Rt. Hon. John Gummer MP at CPRE Cambridgeshire’s AGM

There is a huge housing pressure on this county according to John Gummer, Chairman of the International Commission on Sustainable Consumption and former Secretary of State for the Environment, who addressed campaigners at CPRE Cambridgeshire’s AGM on 3 July 2002.

“We need to get tough”, he told the meeting.

“We need to tell developers you cannot spread over the countryside — but we will help you find alternative sites.”

He continued, “We will not be able to pass on to our children a county as beautiful as the one we received unless we are prepared to fight for it. We can make a difference but we need to get tough.”

Mr Gummer stressed the need for developers to be pressed to come up with more creative schemes for use of brownfield sites. He told the meeting that there were two incorrect but popular myths concerning development in Cambridge:

  • The City is short of brownfield sites: Not true. Building land in the City is not exhausted, all that is needed is imagination.
  • Much development needs to be concentrated in and around the City: Not true, despite the assertions of some industrialists.

He claimed that if developers were forced to use the vacant land within the circle of the M25, there would be than enough to meet current development needs. Local authorities need the muscle to force them to do so.

For more on this subject, see our Press Release of 4 July 2002.

Page last modified on 16 August 2003