The right housing in the right places

The Campaign for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE) has sent AudlemOnline a copy of their Manifesto for the 2015 General Election which they are sending to the main political parties.

It seems to encapsulate the planning issues Audlem and hundreds of other rural communities have been suffering from extremely well.

The Manifesto says:

We need to save our countryside from unnecessary and damaging development by improving planning policy and guidance.

The way we plan our towns and countryside could be so much better. Top-down housing targets that were rightly unpopular with local communities have been replaced with the equally unpopular planning by appeal.

Countryside is being developed unnecessarily and there is a growing threat to the Green Belt and high quality farmland. Planning decisions are increasingly taken to suit the big house builders and against the aspirations of local people.

Where issues cross local administrative boundaries, decisions are now taken by bodies that are even less accountable than the former regional organisations. More new housing must be built. But it must satisfy local needs as well as national ones.

The next Government should:

• Make sure brownfield sites are prioritised for new housing over greenfield sites, and then strengthen protection of the Green Belt against speculative development, through more effective strategic planning across local authority boundaries.
• Increase delivery of the right housing by investing in affordable housing to meet local needs, and providing incentives for custom-build and small-scale house builders.
• Support local aspirations by introducing a community right of appeal against speculative development in areas where a neighbourhood plan has been prepared.

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