Development ‘threat’ to England’s protected nature

New roads and housing developments, quarries and wind farms could damage the landscape of England’s national parks and ‘areas of natural beauty’ and cause noise and pollution, the Campaign to Protect Rural England has said.

CPRE accuses local councils and Government agencies of bending or even breaking their own rules, designed to protect such areas from development, when they are in the way of big infrastructure projects.

A list of protected areas under threat produced by the CPRE includes the Lake District National Park, where a dual carriageway is planned, a quarry in the Peak District, and two 20-turbine wind farms in Northumberland and Lincolnshire. The complete list can be accessed here.

“The whole basis on which the nation’s most beautiful countryside is there to be enjoyed by us all is called into question by a series of damaging proposals,” said Tom Oliver, head of rural policy at CPRE.

“Protected landscapes are only protected to the extent that the Government and local authorities obey their own rules. Time and again, it appears that the Government or a local council is tearing up the rules when a significant conflict arises between one of our finest landscapes and another interest,” he said.

The charity called on the Government and local authorities to “show leadership in the sustainable use of land and honour the protection afforded to nationally designated landscapes. These are aims the Government set itself by designating the landscapes in the first place.”

For more details see the CPRE website.

Goska Romanowicz