CPRE Leicestershire

The Leicestershire Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England

Formerly the Council for the Protection of Rural England

Sir Max Hastings addresses Leicestershire branch members

On Thursday, October 12th, 2006, National CPRE President, Sir Max Hastings, gave Leicestershire Branch members a talk dealing with current countryside protection issues. The talk took place at Leicester's wonderful 14th Century Grade I Listed Guildhall.

In his speech Sir Max said,

"A few months ago, the Tory think-tank Policy Exchange published a series of pamphlets arguing for the easing of planning controls, the opening up of farmland to development, in terms that Gordon Brown and Kate Barker would applaud. PE explicitly declared itself to be attacking CPRE's view of the future.

CPRE has now produced a formidable rebuttal of Policy Exchange's arguments. Our own document, published earlier this Summer, shows that many of PE's claims are founded on unsubstantiated assertions, and sometimes upon false or misleading statistics."

Sir Max added,

"PE seems to welcome 'urban sprawl', the progressive march of development into the countryside around our cities. CPRE has campaigned for decades against this, because random development blights countryside for miles around it... There is a great opportunity here for the Opposition to distance itself from the philistinism of present government policy. It will be a tragedy for the countryside if an undeclared cross-party coalition of politicians espouses policies which will do so much harm to the landscape future generations will know."

After his talk Sir Max presented engraved bronze plaques to the four winners of the 2006 Leicestershire CPRE Design Awards. The winners were Grace Dieu Priory (Thringstone) The Sir John Moore School (Appleby Magna) a group of sixteen new terraced houses ('Varipak' site in Markfield) and the Burton-on-the-Wolds Plantation Scheme.