Prince of the countryside

This was not a shallow celebrity stunt to mark the landmark. Far from it. It was an opportunity, once again, for Prince Charles to highlight the plight of farmers – and how cherished landscapes can be preserved for future generations.

It also coincided with the widely-respected Campaign for the Protection of Rural England producing a new eight-point blueprint to strengthen existing safeguards for the country’s national parks as well as putting in place measures to protect the Yorkshire Wolds and other areas of outstanding natural beauty.

AS CPRE president Andrew Motion said: “David Hockney apparently painted his famous view from Garrowby Hall from memory. But we must do everything we can to make sure that in the future our children will not just know the beauty of the countryside from books and paintings.”

Yet the very fact that the CPRE feels the need to intervene is indicative of the manner in which the evolution of planning law has been mismanaged by the Conservatives, a party that is supposed to be embedded in the countryside.

Rural areas must not be immune from change; they are home to deep pockets of poverty that have been routinely ignored by successive governments who have been more pre-occupied with courting voters in marginal suburban constituencies.

Equally, the beauty of the Yorkshire countryside helps to underpin the region’s critically important tourism industry and any new developments must not detract from the aesthetic appeal of some of the world’s finest landscapes.

Yet, because of the cavalier manner in which the Department of Communities and Local Government has sought to streamline planning rules, there is a growing belief, highlighted by the CPRE today, that there needs to be a subtle difference between the approach pursued in rural areas in comparison to those eyesores on urban brownfield sites which have been blots on the landscape for far too long.