Our Country Valentine

14 February 2006

Countryside campaigners CPRE [1] launch their 80th anniversary year on St Valentine’s Day (Tuesday), with a declaration of undying love to England’s deeply loveable but threatened countryside.

With eight decades of campaigning under its belt since 1926, CPRE has helped achieve many great changes. Changes that have conserved great swathes of tranquil, varied and beautiful countryside in one of the most crowded, built-up, fast-growing nations in the developed world.

Note for Editors

Making our mark, an illustrated booklet on CPRE’s 80 years with an essay by historian Tristram Hunt, is available from CPRE’s press office free of charge. Media can quote from his essay; two extracts are at the end of this news release [2].

Eight of these significant changes, spread through CPRE’s 80-year history, are:

• National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty [3];
• Green Belts [4];
• a strong planning system which gives local people a say in protecting their local environment [5];
• a shift away from urban sprawl [6];
• restrictions on out-of-town shopping development [7];
• support for greener farming [8];
• a ban on advertising hoardings in the countryside [9];
• severe light pollution becoming a Statutory Nuisance [10].

‘Think of these as Valentine’s Day gifts to the nation, speaking up for a beautiful, thriving countryside, something most of us love but take for granted,’ said CPRE Chief Executive Shaun Spiers. ‘But in our 80th anniversary year we’re asking the Government, industry and commerce and the British people to give something as well.

‘Six pledges, in fact. And unless they are granted, there’s every chance that our grandchildren won’t have any real countryside left in another 80 years’ time.’

The six pledges are:

• redouble efforts to promote efficient use of land for housing, aiming for at least 75% of new housing on previously developed land at an average density of 50 homes per hectare;
• bring in a regional policy which respects environmental capacity, rather than requiring each part of the country to push for maximum development;
• encourage local food and commodity procurement in order to strengthen the economy of rural areas and reduce dependence on motorways and trunk roads;
• safeguard substantial funding for farmers to manage the countryside, both to retain the character of the landscapes and to conserve natural resources such as soil and water;
• end the policy of predict and provide for national and regional airport capacity;
• come up with policies which will guarantee to keep large parts of England as tranquil areas – where people really can get away from it all – in perpetuity.

‘At the grand old age of 80, we find ourselves among the UK’s older conservation organisations with a solid list of achievements behind us,’ said Shaun Spiers.

‘It’s a long time in the history of modern environmental campaigning. But if you think of the thousands of years over which people have worked with nature to shape our countryside, it’s only the blink of an eye.

‘Looking around us, we recognise we can’t afford one second’s complacency. The countryside is changing more rapidly than ever, and most of the changes are damaging. We have to love it more, and more wisely, or lose it.’

– END –

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. CPRE, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, is a charity which promotes the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England. We advocate positive solutions for the long-term future of the countryside. Founded in 1926, we have 60,000 supporters and a branch in every county. President: Sir Max Hastings. Patron: Her Majesty The Queen.
2. ‘CPRE has transformed itself from an elite lobbying body to a popular pressure group with tens of thousands of supporters; it has moved from a close focus on design and aesthetics to a broader concern with the social and economic levers driving rural change; and it has shifted from an amenity society to a more consciously environmental organisation. Yet, all the while, it has remained true to many of its founding ideals: a belief in the ecological and social importance of proper planning; an understanding of the vital inter-relationship between urban and rural; and a commitment to preserving the beauty, tranquillity and psychologically nourishing qualities of the English countryside for future generations.
   ’‘…As the assault on the English countryside continues – with urban sprawl replacing ribbon development; advertising hoardings reappearing alongside motorways; Green Belts under threat; and an inter-war style avalanche of house-building looming – the mission and mandate of those pioneering, progressive preservationists remains more compelling than ever.’
   Tristram Hunt, in Making our mark, CPRE, 2006
3. The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 paved the way for the creation of National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England, twenty years after CPRE began campaigning for them.
4. CPRE’s proposal for an ‘open belt’ of protected countryside around London was soon taken up by planning authorities. The Government issued a Circular in 1955 encouraging the establishment of Green Belts around our largest towns and cities across the country.
5. Since its creation, CPRE campaigned for a comprehensive planning system which was finally adopted in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. We have been at the forefront of campaigns to improve the system, including resisting moves in recent years to reduce public involvement in decisions on major development proposals.
6. CPRE led the way in curtailing ribbon development in its early years. It was a leading influence on the Government-appointed Urban Task Force, chaired by Lord Rogers. The task force’s report in 1999 laid the foundations for an urban renaissance and a change in planning policies which demanded an end to low density new housing development and a much stronger focus by developers and local councils on developing derelict ‘brownfield’ sites instead of greenfield sites.
7. CPRE helped secure a strengthening of planning controls over out-of-town retail ‘sheds’ and malls in 1996 when the Government introduced a sequential test for new shopping developments favouring town centre locations.
8. Drawing attention to the damage to the landscape caused by inappropriate farming policies and practice, CPRE was a key player in securing support for environmentally-sensitive land management in the 1980s.
9. CPRE was active from its earliest years in resisting the spread of outdoor advertising in the countryside. Last year we drew attention to the recent growth in intrusive, illegal hoardings leading to Government action to enforce controls.
10. As a result of the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, light pollution from certain sources is to be treated as a statutory nuisance. This follows a major recent campaign by CPRE and the British Astronomical Association showing how spreading light pollution is rapidly eroding our dark, star-filled skies.

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