Planning Changes ‘Will Damage’ Sussex Countryside
CPRE Sussex has warned that the updated National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), unveiled last week by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and immediately coming into force, “will cause irrevocable damage and destruction to green spaces”. According to the campaign group, it will render councils “powerless to argue against destructive development in our villages, towns and countryside”.
The policy document introduces new procedural rules designed to drive economic growth and speed up house-building by limiting the scrutiny of local authority planning committees. But the CPRE believes that it will allow sewage and water systems to become increasingly overloaded, and that it takes no account of action needed on climate change, while failing to promote adequate provision of affordable housing.
The CPRE points out that previous references to valued landscapes outside nationally designated areas have been removed from the new versions of the NPPF, as has any suggestion that the countryside has intrinsic value.
Supporters are urged to write to their local MPs demanding revisions of the document. HIP has asked Helena Dollimore, MP for Hastings & Rye, for her response, but at the time of going to press she has not replied.
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