Archive for September 4th, 2011

Fed up with talk of another hike in train prices, I thought to hell with it and took a helicopter. Actually the chopper was courtesy of Bob Weston of Weston Homes and we hopped over from West Sussex to Uxbridge, Middlesex for a tour of his King’s Island development.

The journey was instructive and not simply because it is not every day I commute to work by helicopter. Every other day at the moment - there’s a recession on you know.

Anyway we covered a big swathe of Southern England and what was most striking from on high were the vast carpets and patchwork quilts of green acres.

The flight was in the week that the likes of the Council to Protect Rural England, the National Trust and the world’s most miserable comedian Griff Rhys Jones all laid into the Coalition’s draft National Planning Policy Framework with breathtaking ignorance in a deliberate campaign to whip up public fear and anger.

Apparently the concrete is already being mixed by the Beelzebub builders. The countryside will be buried under development before you can say Not In My Back Yard.

The NPPF said, even if you read between the lines or backwards, nothing of the sort, whatever the depth of paranoia, or pathetic attempts to justify self-appointed roles as trade unions for those comfortable in their rural idylls, determined not to let hoi polloi in to live and work.

It is the cynical hijacking of a planning debate that is critical to the economic, social and environmental future of this country. Yes the NPPF is that important.

Of course there are issues within the draft that need addressing, for it is far from perfect and comment is invited and welcomed. But the one-eyed responses of some of its critics is shamelessly irresponsible.

By all means be cynical of political motives, voice concerns and ask if there is sufficient protection within the document for the green belt. But all opposition credibility is lost when facts and policy statements are ignored in blatant attempts to raise the ire of a gullible public, convincing them that bulldozers are being mobilized as part of a sinister government plot to overrun our green and pleasant land in the dead of night.

Planning is adversarial enough as it is, but why on earth can we not get sensible people round the table in robust, ordered, constructive debate, rather than self-appointed guardians of the countryside, no doubt chasing new members, making ridiculous and highly damaging claims?

Such groups casually throw out defamatory remarks labelling housebuilders pillagers, or worse. It gets them headlines, more signatures on hysterical, inaccurate petitions and sells more tea towels.

But it does nothing for what they claim they are safeguarding – the future prosperity of the British countryside, balancing growth with conservation and shaping our rural communities.

CPRE president is Bill Bryson, one of my favourite author’s, who, unlike Rhys Jones, I find very funny. Well Bill, Mr Weston and I invite you on a helicopter tour so you can see how nasty, greedy developers have pillaged the British countryside – if concrete is green that is. If you are not pleasantly surprised by the view from on high Bill, I will eat your books.

Rupert Bates is editorial director of whathouse.co.uk

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