Professional AdviceYou are here : In Your Area » North West » Regional News » Planning » Planning
CLA calls on Government to fix Britain’s failing planning system The CLA has today launched a report – Planning for Change in the Countryside – which says the current planning system acts as a brake on "appropriate and much-needed development in the countryside" in the misplaced belief that this supports communities and the environment. The new policy paper says some rural communities have become unsustainable because of restrictions to economic development in the countryside. Launching the report, CLA President William Worsley called on Government to make the planning system "flexible and transparent" and said that the cost of making planning proposals must be proportionate to the size of the development. Mr Worsley said: "We need a planning system that's fit for the 21st century, allowing rural communities to live and work. Stable and flexible planning would deliver quicker and less expensive decisions while taking a balanced approach to sustainable development in a whole host of ways. These include promoting a mixture of development in rural areas, providing for employment sites, housing, transport, public and private services to support the long-term sustainability of rural communities. It also involves working with land managers on conserving and enhancing our natural environment and mitigating climate change." The CLA President said rural housing policy should promote "organic, incremental growth of all villages" and that heritage policy should allow modernisation of buildings without harming their historic or architectural significance. "The current draconian planning regulations and rural policy vacuum are throttling the sustainability of rural communities and driving young people into the towns and cities. We are asking Government to loosen the grip on planning to give the countryside a chance to thrive". Douglas Chalmers, Director CLA North added: "We seem to have forgotten that rural communities and settlements originally were founded around a vibrant economic activity, and yet it often appears that we now want to freeze them as they are, even if this condemns them to economic, social and environmental decline. "Of course planning needs to be kept within a framework, but it still needs to encourage resourcefulness and enterprise. Diversifying farms can protect their future for the next generation. Rurally based businesses provide employment for people in remoter areas and attract money from outside the locality. Combined with a realistic approach to providing affordable local needs housing, we can keep our young people in rural areas, underwriting our economic future and maintaining the social framework of our communities. "There is huge scope for appropriate development in rural areas. They have the drive to help kick-start the country's economy, and our planning system should help rather than hinder them." Planning for Change in the Countryside – the full CLA policy paper can be downloaded from: www.cla.org.uk/policy_docs/CLA_Planning_for_Change.pdf
|
Contact Douglas Chalmers
Douglas is from an Aberdeenshire farming family and trained as an animal nutritionist after graduating from the University of Aberdeen. He held technical and management positions in the agricultural supply industry for 20 years prior to joining the CLA in 2001 as North West Regional Director. He is a Governor of Myerscough College and a member of Cumbria Local Access Forum. He was previously Chairman of Cumbria Fells & Dales RDPE Local Action Group and Vice Chairman of the North West Rural Affairs Forum. Douglas and his wife own a small farm near Appleby-in-Westmorland keeping Herdwick sheep and free-range poultry, and where he has helped his wife to form Learning Fields, a Community Interest Company and care farming enterprise offering educational and environmental activities. He is also a member of Eden Time Bank. T: 01748 907070 F: 01748 907075 douglas.chalmers@cla.org.uk Have a problem - need advice? North West Office Aske Stables
Join the CLA today
The CLA Game Fair 2012
CLA Events in your area To receive our regular email newsletter containing advice and the latest news affecting the region - contact the office or send your email address and membership number to info.north@cla.org.uk |
RSS Feeds
- Policy Topics
- Policy Topics
- Site sections
- Specially for members
© 2012 Country Land and Business Association Limited (CLA). All rights reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature without prior written permission of the copyright holder except as expressly permitted by law.
Disclaimer
No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action in reliance on or as a result of the material included in or omitted in this website can be or is accepted by the author(s), the CLA or its officers or trustees or employees or any other persons.
The Advisory Services are made available to members on the basis that members' rights to compensation and the liability (if any) of CLA and its officers and/or its staff advisers, are restricted in the following ways. In the event of any advice given by any CLA staff adviser being given negligently or otherwise being incorrect no liability whatsoever is accepted by the CLA or its officers or by its staff advisers concerned
(a) towards any person who is not the current CLA member to whom the advice was directly given,
(b) to any person in the respect of consequential loss or loss of profits, or
(c) to any person for any sum exceeding £50,000 in respect of any one enquiry (whether made or responded to orally or in writing and whether dealt with at one time or over a period of time).
Any person making use of the Advisory Services accepts such restrictions. Members should refer to appropriate professional advisers in private practice before taking any particular course of action potentially or actually involving any substantial amounts of money.
Please note that whilst the advisers are able to advise on a wide range of subjects relating to land ownership, they cannot act in place of a member's own solicitor, accountant, surveyor and tax specialist by, for example, drafting documents or corresponding on their behalf and may be precluded, by the rules of their own professions, from advising one CLA member against another CLA member in the case of conflict.
Solicitors Indemnity Fund . Solicitors in the CLA Legal Team are not covered by the Solicitors Indemnity Fund in relation to professional negligence in relation to any advice given by them.
Please note that from time to time telephone calls maybe recorded for training purposes.