Ben Stafford: Coalition proposals to ease planning laws must safeguard the countryside

WHO would have thought 2012 would come around so quickly? At the risk of sounding like someone who says things like “the years seem to go by more and more quickly as you get older” or “I remember when this was all fields”, well… the years do seem to go by more quickly. And there do seem to be ever more places that we wistfully recall were once fields, now built on. More of that later.

Thinking about what we at the Campaign to Protect Rural England hope for in 2012, it’s worth looking back first over the past year. At a personal level, I think I’ve done quite well with my New Year’s resolutions. I’ve been running (almost) twice a week. I haven’t used the lift at work since 2007 (to keep fit, I should add, rather than because of claustrophobia). And I did quite well with my resolution to cook more, although why every recipe has to have some weird, rogue ingredient in it like cider vinegar, or cornflour, or ground mace, who knows?

There must be vast stockpiles of these things in cupboards across the country, used once and then doomed to fester for years until the weevils move in.

But I should really ask how the countryside has fared in 2011, and how the Coalition has lived up to its rolling resolution to be “the greenest government ever”.

Well, it’s a mixed picture. I want to look forward so, in reflecting on 2011, I’ll just say that while there have been positives, like the first White Paper on protecting the natural environment for 20 years, there have also been significant negatives, most notably the proposed planning reforms that still pose a major threat to the countryside. At best the Government is a pale shade of green – so what could it do better in 2012?

We have to start with planning. I began by mentioning green fields being built on, and unless Ministers bring forward a much better final National Planning Policy Framework than the draft they consulted on last summer, the threat to our countryside outside protected sites will increase.

This matters for Yorkshire. We have wonderful National Parks in the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors, and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty such as the Howardian Hills and Nidderdale, as well as the South and West Yorkshire Green Belt and the York Green Belt around some of our major cities. Continuing protection for these hugely important areas is welcome, but it’s not enough.

There is lots of countryside in between that, under present proposals, would be much less well protected. No one is saying we should never build on green fields – sometimes we have to, and we do. But development on green sites should be the option of very last resort – recreating countryside is far more difficult than digging it up in the first place.

So we hope for a much better statement of the Government’s planning policy, which protects all of the countryside properly and also reinstates the preference for developing on previously used sites, which is good for the vitality of towns and cities and for the long-term survival of the countryside.

This year will also be a big one for our farmers and farmed landscapes, whether the patchwork of fields, hedges and woods in the Wharfe Valley north of Leeds, the upland slopes of the Dales or the rich farmland of the Vale of York. The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy is up for one of its periodic reviews. Distant and bureaucratic as that process may seem, getting it right could make a big difference to the character of our countryside.

We hope the Government will fight to ensure that payments farmers receive to support their management of the land will allow them to take actions that benefit our landscapes and wildlife as well as producing the food we need. If they can do that, the prize will be a countryside that remains beautiful, inspirational and productive.

And thinking of food, CPRE will produce our new reports in 2012 looking at local food webs across England, including around Otley, near Leeds. These will recommend how businesses and local planners, and all of us as shoppers, can do more to support this vital local food economy. We’ll also produce a national report, and we hope Ministers will read it carefully, and do what they can to back the fresh, distinctive local food that is so important to the lives of many small towns and even, as we have found in Sheffield, our big cities.

One final wish for 2012. Please can we tackle the rising tide of litter? The Government has launched a new national campaign against litter, Love Where You Live. It’s a good start, but it needs support from businesses, councils and the Government itself if it’s going to make a difference. Ministers could show their intentions by making a small change to the law to make it easier to deal with people who throw litter from their cars. Surely no-one could disagree that it would be good to do something to clear up roadsides that increasingly resemble linear rubbish dumps through some of our most beautiful countryside?

So, that’s my little wish-list for 2012. And, while you reflect on it, I’m going off to mix myself a cider vinegar, cornflour and mace cocktail. Happy New Year.

TOMORROW: Sir Norman Bettison, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police.