Government to remove obligation to notify landowners above fracking sites?
Written by CPRE Sussex
16 October 2013
Georgia Wrighton, Director of CPRE Sussex responded on Monday to a Department of Communities and Local Government consultation which proposes to remove the requirement to notify landowners above fracking/shale gas drilling activities going on underground beneath their properties.
The new proposed standard application form will fail to "consider the complex and far-reaching impacts of unconventional oil and gas exploration and extraction, and attempts to ignore real concerns in the countryside about the impacts on local people and the environment," says Wrighton.
Read the full response here in our Fracking campaigns section.
CPRE Sussex: Onshore oil and gas consultation
Written by William Shaw16 October 2013
Georgia Wrighton, Director of CPRE Sussex has responded to a Department of Communities and Local Government consultation which proposes to remove the requirement to notify landowners above fracking/shale gas drilling activities going on underground beneath their properties. Read the response in full:
Protect Sussex: let us know about planning threats near you
Written by CPRE SussexA planning threat near where you live? Let us know about it so we can spread the word. Complete this online form and we'll be able to add the information to online map. (It may take a few days for us to upload it – we rely on volunteers to upload your submissions!)
Speak out NOW for the countryside, rural affordable homes and local decision making
Written by CPRE Sussex
7 October 2013
The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) is urging people to write to their local MP today about a draft new Government website on planning guidance.
If the website is not improved it will frustrate the building of thousands of affordable homes, and lead to local councils being repeatedly overruled about where, and what type of, new housing is built in their area.
CPRE Sussex Review Summer 2013
Futureproofing Conference report, Bexhill Link update, Help protect your area, Eric Ravilious and the CPRE and more.
The CPRE Sussex Review is published three times a year and is distributed free to our members. Download your free copy below.
The Annual CPRE Sussex Countryside Trust Bursary of £500.00 will be awarded to a student journalist studying at City College Brighton & Hove who has a serious interest in raising awareness of environmental and countryside issues over the course of the coming year.
Public Meeting: Do you want Mayfield Market Town here?
Written by CPRE Sussex
When: Friday 18 October 7.30pm
Where: Adastra Hall, Keymer Road, Hassocks BN6 8QH
Developers are seeking government support for a new town, the size of Burgess Hill right here.
IT WILL AFFECT YOU, potentially devalue your home and cover the countryside around Henfield, Woodmancote, Shermanbury, Twineham, Wineham, Sayers Common, Albourne, Blackstone, Hickstead & Hurstpierpoint. We must act now. Find out more about this vast proposed development.
Come and make your voice heard
Keynote Speakers:
- Nick Herbert MP Arundel & South Downs
- Nicholas Soames MP Mid Sussex
- Anthony Watts-Williams Locals Against Mayfield Building Sprawl (LAMBS)
Chair: Dr Roger Smith Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) Sussex
This meeting is jointly organised by CPRE Sussex and LAMBS Locals Against Building Sprawl
About this meeting
Campaigners say that developer’s plans will concrete over precious countryside, precious though not benefitting from any special protection which would provide some chance against the ‘development at all costs’ bias we are seeing in national planning policy implementation. Locals fear that this much loved landscape could be sacrificed to profit over proper planning.
Georgia Wrighton, Director of CPRE Sussex said “Neither plans being developed by Horsham or Mid Sussex District Councils identify the need for proposals being put forward by Mayfield Market Town Ltd, yet local democracy is in danger of being undermined by pressure being put to bear by company interests. The need for housing is undeniable in Sussex but how much, where and how that development is provided must be allowed to be debated locally, not foisted upon communities by have-a-go developers taking advantage of mixed messages from government. We are looking to government to show us that Localism works in practice.”
CPRE say that there is enough brownfield land to build 740,920 new dwellings in the southern regions (London, South East, and the South West) and that developers are holding onto land for 400,000 homes locked up in planning permissions not yet built in the UK. This public meeting follows a major conference held by CPRESussex in March ‘Futureproofing Sussex’ which showcased the CPRE national report ‘Countryside Promises: Planning realities’. The report analyses the way that the government’s planning policy, the National Planning Policy Framework has been applied since its introduction last year, highlighting that the views of local communities have been overruled time and time again with major new housing developments being allowed to sprawl across precious countryside.
Call to arms: Stop destruction of the English countryside
Written by CPRE National Office
‘Precisely at the moment when we should be defending the countryside, and making it more accessible because it gives us all what we need more freely than anything else under the sun – we are at grave risk of losing it.’ CPRE President Sir Andrew Motion
As the evidence mounts that Government planning reforms are not working the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) today (Monday) launches a three point charter to save our countryside. The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was intended to simplify planning and get houses built. The reforms have not delivered the housing people need and are instead causing harm to communities and landscapes.
CPRE believes that unsustainable and increasing pressure is being placed on the countryside, and sensible planning is undermined by short-sighted pursuit of economic growth at any cost.
16 July 2013
Georgia Wrighton, Director CPRE Sussex Countryside Trust, has made a formal response to the Environment Agency response to the application by Cuadrilla for a mining waste permit for exploration of shale gas at Balcombe, West Sussex on behalf of CPRE Sussex.
