TRANSPORT AND ENVIRONMENT
most in many public sector minds in these austere times, it is important that it doesn’t fall off the radar.
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Our countryside is a delicate environment and requires care and attention. And while it is understandable that budgets will have to take a squeeze like every other service, a certain amount of work still needs to be done.
The main challenges at the moment, ac- cording to Shaun Spiers, chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), are a shortage of resources, which is going to put pressure on the protection of green space and the countryside, and the upcoming major overhaul to the plan- ning system, with pilot projects already being rolled out that almost all incentivise development and reduce the power of local communities and councils to oppose new building.
Big Changes
Spiers told PSE: “There has been a bit of un- certainty after the abolition of the Regional Strategies, but there are big changes down the line both in terms of planning policy and in terms of incentives for new housing. Local authorities are going to have to be very effective in addressing those issues in a satisfactory way.”
36 | public sector executive Mar/Apr 11
“With regards to the differing responsi- bilities of councils, there are urban and rural authorities, some of which will have responsibility for green belt areas or ar- eas with no protection at all, so it is a very varied picture. From our point of view, we see that every local authority in the coun- try would have the opportunity to exercise policies which would have some relevance
“So I don’t want to be damning about local authorities, but on the other hand there are some which are very slow at getting their plans in place. Without a plan, it tends to turn into a bit of a free-for-all in terms of development. CPRE would always like a high priority given to getting a decent local plan in place based on adequate engage- ment with the local population.”
lthough maintaining and protecting the countryside may not be upper-
There is also a lack of consistency with re- gards to the responsibilities that individual local authorities feel they hold towards the countryside.
“It is different from place to place,” Spiers advised. “But it is not just the countryside which CPRE is campaigning for. We have always had quite an interest in urban regen- eration as well. We were on the early Urban Task Force chaired by Richard Rogers un- der the last government and were great champions of the ‘brownfi eld fi rst’ policy in the guidance for higher housing densities.
“Those policies were started under the Major government, then were features of the Blair and Brown governments and are now in question; but there are arguments to say that the Urban Renaissance policy and the Town Centre First policy have helped to revive an awful lot of towns and cities, and in doing so, have also helped to protect an awful lot of countryside. As a countryside protection organisation, we cannot just think about the countryside.
to the countryside - even if they are inner city local authorities.”
Best practice
Whilst there is much that needs to be done by local authorities to maintain our green spaces, it doesn’t always have to be a case of radically changed practices.
Spiers explained: “I think that some lo- cal authorities are very good at protecting and improving their green spaces; some are very tenacious in defending the green belt for instance. Some are very good at de- veloping the right sort of affordable rural housing, based on a local needs assessment and from possibly working closely with parish councils.
“There are all sorts of examples of good neighbourhood planning and we are doing some work at the moment to try and draw those out. We’d then like to see this sort of thing mainstreamed with other local au- thorities following the practice of the best.
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