CPRE Leicestershire

As you are no doubt aware, the Coalition Government is in the process of taking apart the well developed, tried-and-tested regulations governing sensible planning practice. This comprises a set of documents called Planning Policy Guidance papers (PPGs) Planning Policy Statements (PPSs) and Mineral Planning Guidance (MPGs). The page-count for the PPGs and PPSs is 552 and for the MPGs it is 472. Each PPS and PPG covers a specific area of planning. In addition there are another 73 pages of supporting Circulars and Notes. The Government proposes to slash this total page count of 1,097 down to a mere fifty or so pages - a document currently out for consultation until October 17th and known as the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

This makes no planning sense at all for the following reasons:

• The Government has got rid of minimum housing density requirements.
• Strategic regional planning has gone out of the window.
• The requirement to develop brownfield sites first and greenfield sites last has also been ditched. You can guess which of these two are the least expensive to develop.
• The requirement for providing affordable homes is down to the whim of local authorities.
• Under the NPPF only Green Belts, National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) and Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) will have protection from development. Leicestershire has no Green Belts, no AONBs and no National Parks - and some of the SSSIs in the county are threatened by degradation.

Consider this analogy... you wish to tackle a plumbing problem in your home and you are confident that, with the aid of the 512-page Readers' Digest DIY Manual, you can do the job. Now imagine this manual condensed to a shadow of its former self. Will a self-help manual slimmed down to a tad under 5% of what it was be of any real use? In effect, this is what the 52-page NPPF represents.

Now, any local authority without advanced preparations made for its Local Development Framework (LDF) will have its greenfield sites totally unprotected. You may have heard the NPPF being cynically referred to as a 'developers' charter'. This is not a long way from the truth. You may have also heard that the NPPF will continue to give protection to Green Belt areas. For Leicestershire this raises a grave problem in that we do not have a single square inch of Green Belt in the county.

All we have are 'Green Wedges' which unlike the Green Belts have no national statutory protection. Under the proposed regime the building free-for-all is best left to your imagination. The map below shows the local authority areas comprising Leicestershire and their respective vulnerabilities as far as their LDFs are concerned:

Before the consultation deadline, Leicestershire CPRE will offer guidance on writing to your MP regarding the NPPF. In the meantime consider this potential development scenario...

(Picture taken from Windmill Hill, Woodhouse Eaves)

Whatever happens, lots of new homes have to be accommodated somehow. Are they to be built as 'sustainable urban extensions' or should the countryside be 'pepper-potted' with new homes? Does the problem necessarily polarise into these two approaches or is there a compromise, or maybe there are other solutions?