Countryside: Villages 'under threat' from planning system failures

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) said in a report that the current system is failing rural communities by imposing unfair restrictions, causing young people to move out to towns and cities.

CLA president William Worsley, from Hovingham, near Pickering, said: "The risk is that the countryside will become fossilised. It means that economic sustainability will disappear and villages will just become dormitories for wealthy people.

"What we want to see is living, working, thriving environments. The key to that is design – if you do things well, you can improve villages, rather than damage them."

He recognised that some people in villages are "terrified" of change but insisted it was the only way to keep such areas alive.

"Villages need to develop gradually and appropriately," he said. "If they stop changing, they lose their heart and die."

The report, Planning for Change in the Countryside, says that present planning rules, and the soaring costs of making planning applications, have put a brake on much needed development in the countryside.

It urged the Government to simplify the application system so it is easier for land owners and farmers to understand.

Mr Worsley said the key was the appropriate development of housing, transport and facilities to promote the "organic, incremental growth of all villages" without them losing their character.

"The current draconian planning regulations and rural policy vacuum are throttling the sustainability of rural communities and driving young people into the towns and cities," he said. "We are asking the Government to loosen the grip on planning to give the countryside a chance to thrive."

Families need to be encouraged to stay in villages instead of being forced to move because of the lack of jobs and facilities, Mr Worsley added.

He said: "You can have one place that's a pretty village that has a heart and a life, and then you can have another village next door to it and it's completely dead because all the BMWs and Mercedes parked outside the pretty cottages have gone out to the nearest town to work."

The report concludes that the planning system should change to allow a "stable and flexible regime" which delivers "quicker, less expensive decisions while taking a balanced approach to the concept of

sustainable development".