22/04/05 - Conservatives Action To Protect Green Spaces

CONSERVATIVE ACTION TO PROTECT GREEN SPACES

Why Labour Are All Talk

In 1996 Mr Blair said: ‘I love our countryside, I love the variety…You really have to plan for your rural environment. Which is why some people in the country instinctively feel the Labour Party might take a more active view of that,’(Country Life, 26 September 1996). All talk.

Labour have weakened planning protection for green spaces and the Green Belt, seized the powers of local councils and handed them to regional quangos to sidestep the views of local people, and laid out plans for the destruction of the south’s green fields, whilst demolishing empty Victorian terraces in the north.

• In 2003, Mr Prescott published his so-called ‘Sustainable Communities Plan’ which heralds a massive increase in the amount of greenfield and Green Belt development in specific ‘urban growth areas’ across the country.

• Regional bureaucracy has ballooned under Labour, strengthening the interfering role of the Government Offices for the Regions and the unelected regional assemblies.

• Labour have admitted that an average of 1,110 hectares of undeveloped Green Belt is being built on every year (Hansard, 30 April 2004, Col. 1332WA).

• Labour claim they want to regenerate ‘brownfield’ sites, yet their definitions of ‘previously developed land’ includes suburban green spaces such as leafy back gardens. As a result, councils are increasingly powerless to provide protection against growing sprawl.

• Plans to bulldoze the countryside are clearly laid out in the Treasury review into housing (Barker Review, Review of Housing Supply – Final Report, Cm 2004). It calls for a massive extension of regional planning and regional involvement in housing, a range of new arbitrary centralised targets, and a massive amount of greenfield and Green Belt development.

Mr Blair is literally putting into practice John Prescott’s remark that ‘the Green Belt is a Labour achievement, and we mean to build on it’ (cited in The Guardian, 16 April 1999).

Liberal Democrats

Liberal Democrats frequently oppose proposed local developments, yet they want regional bureaucrats not local people to have the final say on housing and planning. Liberal Democrats’ proposals for regional government involve ‘spatial planning (including housing numbers)’ being decided at a distant regional level, not a local level (Don Foster, Empowering the People: Plans for Strong Regional Government, February 2002, p.4).

This would mean that politicians and bureaucrats in distant regional bodies could impose sprawling housing estates, rail freight lines, by-passes, motorways, new airport runways, irrespective of the views of local communities and local representatives.

What will Conservatives do?

Under our Action to Protect Green Spaces an incoming Conservative Government will:

• Abolish John Prescott’s environmentally damaging Communities Plan, which will concrete over the south, while bulldozing Victorian terraces across the north.

• Shut down the unelected and unaccountable regional assemblies, and give the powers the regional quangos have seized back to local people.

• Protect the Green Belt from John Prescott and make it easier to create new Green Belts around towns and villages to stop urban sprawl.

• Safeguard England’s suburban gardens, by reversing John Prescott’s decision to class them as ‘brownfield land’ and giving local people a greater say to stop unwanted infill development.

• Discard the Treasury’s Barker Plan which seeks to weaken green fields’ protection even further and extend regional interference.

Cllr Justin Tomlinson, North Swindon Conservative Candidate, "There is a clear choice on 5 May: England’s green fields being concreted over with Mr Blair, or a greater say for local people with the Conservatives.  With major developments such as Coate being forced onto Swindon by this Labour Government, it is unacceptable that the local residents are prevented from being able to make the final decision on this development."