I'd imagine that none of you will have read the NPPF. If you have a spare few hours and don't mind reading fairly large and dry documents, then I'd advocate putting this article down, and working your way through it, because to be quite honest if you read it first-hand I have no doubt the document itself will put more of a compelling case against the NPPF than I ever could by simply telling you about its contents.

This is a document that is not grounded in the planning system, nor has any real care or respect for the countryside. It is essentially a message from the Chancellor that developers have carte blanche to coat our beautiful countryside in concrete.  By moving to a planning system that is significantly weaker than our current one and which resembles that of Greece and Ireland, are we really expected to believe it is going to help the economy and environment of our nation? I’ll let you answer that question for yourself!

This document is going to be incredibly damaging to our countryside in many ways. It will require local authorities in Kent and across the Country to allocate significantly more land for housing than is actually necessary. In places such as Tunbridge Wells, the planning minister Greg Clarkes own constituency, this will likely require the local authority to either build on Greenbelt land, or otherwise ‘redraw’ these boundaries. There are already ominous rumblings that this may happen in a number of places within Kent.

However, whilst the Greenbelt is likely to suffer, much of CPRE Protect Kent’s concern is grounded in the fact that ‘ordinary’ unprotected countryside will be excessively threatened by this new planning document.  This is due to the proposed presumption in favour of “sustainable” development. This essentially means that local authorities will be required to ensure their plans are focussed on economic development with little regard to whether the consequences will be sustainable or appropriate. Where a local plan is “absent, silent, indeterminate or….out of date” they will be expected to grant planning permission. George Osbourne recently said that the “default answer to development is ‘yes’” and the NPPF will require that this principle holds true regardless of how damaging the proposal is.

Whilst many developers and the National Home Builders Federation will argue that the NPPF will help with the housing crisis, it will not. This is simply because banks aren’t lending currently, not because the market is under-supplied.  The NPPF will simply lead to the decimation of many of our beautiful, historic and cherished landscapes for very little and potentially no gain, and this is why we must oppose it with all of our resources. After all, the last time an industry (banking) was insufficiently regulated it led to one of the worst economic melt downs in history. Next time it could be worse.