East Devon Green Party objects to proposal to over-ride local plans

By PRSD, on Wednesday, September 28, 2011

East Devon Green Party: is campaigning for a local planning framework

East Devon Green Party is strongly opposed to the government’s Draft National Planning Policy Framework. Described by the chairman of the National Trust, Sir Simon Jenkins, as “local only in cosmetics”, this government proposal allows the presumption in favour of growth and development to over-ride hard won local planning frameworks.

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has said: “The new national planning proposals expose this Government’s shocking bias towards big business and its determination to tear up protection laws for our precious countryside.”

Honiton resident and Green Party member John Crew said: “Our government’s target on growth is blinkered; unsustainable growth will without doubt lead to more problems.”

East Devon Green Party policy spokesperson Emily McIvor said: “Here in East Devon, the local Green Party, with other like-minded people, is campaigning for a local planning framework which will ensure that any new developments, if they happen at all, will ‘eat their own smoke. In other words they will deal with their own waste, and not impact negatively on the rest of us by causing increased congestion and by damaging the landscape.

“We want to make sure that developers create housing that will be truly sustainable, with adequate affordable housing, energy generation, public transport infrastructure, public services, open spaces, allotments, and access to the countryside.

“But hard won safeguards in the local development framework would be cast aside by the government’s policy of a presumption in favour of development. The government seems to think that faster house building is the solution to the country’s economic challenges. We do not agree.”