Lobbying has effect on rural planning attitudes

Both the national Farmers Union and the Country Land and Business Association are claiming that their lobbying made significant differences to the final version of a new planning policy statement from the Department for Communities & Local Government, numbered PPS4, headlined 'Planning for Sustainable Economic Growth', and published on December 29.

It is a response to a review of the planning system by a Bank of England representative, Kate Barker, nearly four years ago.

Her criticisms also prompted the Taylor Review of the Rural Economy and Affordable Housing, by Lib Dem MP Matthew Taylor, which has led to separate planning guidance.

The landowners' lobbies did not think the first draft of PPS4 went far enough on the subject of rural development and successfully pressed for an instruction that housing and business developments should not be ruled out simply because of lack of public transport – which planners have tended to use as a litmus test of sustainability, according to their critics.

The new guidelines also specifically require planners to weigh economic development against conservation, to be sympathetic to development of historic buildings for new uses and to "respond positively" to applications for farm shops.

"The changes we asked for were mainly about tone and emphasis but they should give applicants new ways to apply pressure and it will be interesting to see how they are used," NFU policy adviser Ivan Moss said this week.

His counterpart at the CLA, Fenella Collins, said: "There is a recognition that economic development does actually take place in the country, and that is a big change.

"As it happens, there have been more business start-ups in rural than in urban areas for two or three years now."

The PPS4 document can be found at http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/planningpolicystatement4.pdf