News
This is the news page of the website as things happen and events take place we will upload stories and photos. Please check back regularly:
July 2007
Here's an Op-Ed, Neil Sindon, Policy Director at CPRE wrote for the Guardian on July 18th.
PLANNING REFORM: IS BROWN LISTENING?
Neil Sinden, Policy Director, Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)
He said he wanted to listen. But barely halfway through the consultation period concerning some of the most drastic changes to the planning system for 60 years Gordon Brown seems to have already made up his mind by announcing last week that he will implement proposals ‘to speed up the development of major infrastructure projects’.
Proposals for reforming planning for major infrastructure, which formed the centrepiece of the Government’s Planning White Paper published in May, have aroused widespread public concern. There is little evidence that the new Prime Minister is listening to the views of an unprecedented coalition of civic and environmental groups about these proposals.
Some reform is welcome. It is difficult to find any serious objection in principle to the need for clearer statements of national policy concerning major transport, energy, waste and water projects. Improvements in the way project promoters respond to issues arising from Environmental Assessment at the scheme development stage are required whatever new system is put in place.
A closer look at the detail, however, raises some serious questions. For example, the nature and effectiveness of consultation, and the role of Environmental Assessment, in preparing national policy statements will greatly affect public confidence in the status and content of these statements. But the omens are not good. The Government has already come unstuck with a legal challenge to the consultation process which preceded the Energy Review in 2006. There is also widespread consternation at the suggestion that the climate-busting Aviation White Paper would form the basis of a national policy statement for that sector.
The most intractable issues surround the Government’s desire to create a new infrastructure planning commission. Few would disagree with the need to increase institutional capacity for taking wise and well-informed decisions on major projects. Some kind of advisory commission, possibly based on the model of the existing Planning Inspectorate, could play a valuable role. But to give a new, Government-appointed super-quango, whose independence will be under constant scrutiny, powers actually to approve major projects is a step too far.
It would break with the established practice of Ministers being held directly accountable for what are often the most controversial planning decisions. This is made even more disturbing by the very limited scope proposed for the commission to reject environmentally damaging schemes even though these may be judged to be consistent with a national policy statement. Critically, introducing an ‘open floor’ stage at the end of an inquiry after detailed examination of the evidence would effectively remove the public’s right to be heard on matters of critical importance.
The Prime Minister needs to tune in to voices other than those of the business community to understand the true purpose of the planning system. It is not there simply to make speedy decisions in favour of short term business interests. Planning exists for a more important purpose - to deliver long term, sustainable development in the public interest. This inevitably takes time and involves the consideration of many complex factors. Welcome new rules governing inquiries into major projects have only just been revised to improve their efficiency. These have yet to be used. The planning process provides a valuable democratic space for decisions to be made after the full and transparent consideration of a range of economic, social and environmental factors. In doing so, it helps secure public consent over the development and use of land, one of our scarcest resources.
Ultimately, it is unlikely that the proposed reform package will actually deliver greater certainty and speedier decisions. The eventual outcome is more likely to be yet more delay and frustration for infrastructure providers, and local communities, as a result of legal challenges. Ultimately, we may even see a resurgence of the kind of direct action protest which affected a number of major road schemes in the 1990s. This would benefit no-one.
The Government has underestimated the scale of opposition to aspects of its planning reform agenda. Earlier proposals to speed planning for major infrastructure were dropped in the face of huge opposition barely 5 years ago. Will a similar fate await this latest misguided attempt?
June 2007
Here an interesting article from Graham Wynne writing in the RSPB’s magazine Birds:
What is land for?
Graham Wynne, chief executive of the RSPB
The UK occupies less than one sixth of one per cent of the world’s land surface, yet has over one per cent of its human population and so the pressures on land, particularly in the south-east, are high and increasing. Decision-makers are right to be asking fundamental questions about public policy and land use.
Every interest group wants a share of an ever more fragmented resource—new airports, roads, housing developments, power stations and shopping centres are all eating away at a finite countryside. Different land uses are emerging—large-scale planting of crops for fuel will soon compete for land with food production. And there is real concern that government calls for streamlining of the planning system are code for weakening it and making it less democratic. In all this clamour for land, it is vital that the voices for nature are heard.
Current discussions take place against a backdrop of decades of loss and deterioration of wildlife-rich habitats. There have been some hard-won modest gains in recent years, but these advances remain precarious. And the countryside around us is still much poorer in wildlife than that which we inherited from previous generations—contrasting starkly with progress in other areas of our existence. The price of material advancement should not be an impoverished natural environment. We must look after those precious natural assets that remain, but we also now have the capacity to enhance the quality of our countryside, towns and seas. We can improve existing habitats, restore others and recreate at least some of our lost wildlife riches. This is an exciting progressive environmental agenda.
"Wild places aren’t only good for wildlife, they are also vital for the well-being of us all."
We don’t think that the whole country should be an enormous nature reserve—but nor do we think that wildlife should continue to be pushed to the margins. It should not be beyond our wit to grow crops, build houses and yet also put nature back into the fields, forests and towns around us. And now there is increasing evidence that a new look at this issue strengthens the wildlife arguments. Wild places aren’t only good for wildlife, they are also vital for the well-being of us all. For example, river floodplains are not only important nesting areas for breeding wading birds such as lapwings and snipe, they also reduce the risk of flooding of houses in much of lowland Britain. Coastal saltmarshes not only provide nesting habitat for redshanks, and winter feeding sites for twites, but they are also an important nursery ground for fish and act to reduce the impact of storm waves on our sea defences. Places that are important for wildlife also provide us with valuable services, ‘ecosystem services’, that we tend to take for granted.
The uplands of Britain—from Bodmin Moor to the Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland—comprise a suite of varied and wonderful landscapes, yet their poor soils and harsh extremes of weather make them challenging places to make a living. Their futures would be brighter if only we valued these wild places properly. Could not the future for the uplands be in farming carbon (protecting peat bogs so that they do not release their carbon dioxide into the atmosphere), farming water (restoring the hills’ sponge-like qualities to reduce flooding farther downstream) as well as farming livestock more extensively. Managed more sustainably, the uplands could also act even more effectively as the ‘green lungs’ of the country, where people can relax, enjoy nature and restore their spirits.
We welcome fresh thinking about these issues. Land is scarce and precious and we should use it sustainably and wisely. But wildlife is scarce and precious and wonderful too! Wildlife conservation is a good thing in its own right, but if decision-makers are beginning to realise that conserving and restoring wild places also benefits our own species, then perhaps we may see a much-needed revival in the fortunes of the wildlife around us.
