26 March 2011
BDC Cabinet pledges of "empowering communities" fading fast
The Green Party today highlighted new threats to greenfield land announced in the Budget.
The Chancellor has said that the answer councils should give to planning applications should be a "default yes" and he has removed quotas for building on brownfield land.
In Braintree District, delivering new development on brownfield land has been a key principle, which the Greens have supported, but which has now been put at risk by the Conservative/Lib Dem Government. If less development is directed to brownfield land, then the pressure on greenfield sites, particularly around Witham and Braintree, will inevitably increase.
Cllr. James Abbott, who has been working with colleagues and the local community for years to try to stop 300 houses being built on the countryside in Rivenhall Parish (1) said
"The BDC Cabinet ignored local views on greenfield housing in Rivenhall, but told us we need not worry as the new Government was committed to local decision making and "empowering communities" to shape their own future.
We were sceptical then, but completely disbelieving now after the Chancellor's Budget which will put much greater pressure on the countryside as developers will use the Budget announcement to argue for release of more greenfield sites.
How can the Conservatives locally speak with any legitimacy about wanting to preserve green space from development when their government is doing everything it can to do the opposite of that and they themselves are totally ignoring local people.
This looks increasingly like "Back to the Future" - the bad old days of the 1980s when the Conservatives allowed swathes of countryside to be built over with poorly designed densly built housing estates with little or no regard for environmental considerations.
We do need housing, but it must be directed first to brownfield sites and be built to the highest Green standards to benefit both the residents who live there and the wider environment."
The Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), the leading organisation on planning and the countryside, has stated that the Budget presents "a potentially devastating threat to the countryside" (2).
Notes:
(1) The Public Hearing before a Government Inspector into the 300 houses proposed by BDC on land off Forest Road/Rectory Lane in Rivenhall, starts on May 18th and the Hearing is expected to consider the Lodge Farm, Witham and Rivenhall sites on May 24th.
Hundreds of residents in both Witham and Rivenhall objected to these greenfield sites, far more than for any other sites proposed in BDC's Core Strategy.
(2) Neil Sinden CPRE's Director of Policy said,
"The planning measures present a potentially devastating threat to the countryside and are unlikely to boost long-term economic growth. To suggest, as successive Governments have done, that planning is a key impediment to growth is just wrong. It is disappointing that George Osborne is repeating the mistaken assertions made by Gordon Brown".
"The planning system exists to prevent unsustainable, unwanted and environmentally damaging development. Today's Budget is likely to undermine its ability to do this."
CPRE PRESS RELEASE
http://www.cpre.org.uk/news/view/736
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