UK green groups attack government building plans
Date: 07-Feb-03
Country: UK
Author: Michelle Green
Campaigners said the plans, aimed at easing a growing housing shortage, would see greenfield sites "disappear under concrete".
"We accept that there is a need for new housing, and we accept that some of it will have to be in the southeast," Nick Schoon, of the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), told BBC radio.
"But we have a general worry about more and more of the countryside disappearing under housing estates and concrete. Countryside is precious to all of us and it is disappearing."
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott unveiled proposals to parliament this week to build up to half a million new homes in England's southeast over the next 30 years.
He said a "stepped" increase in the housing supply - at a cost of 22 billion pounds over the next three years alone - was needed to reverse a 30 year history of under-investment.
Addressing environmentalists' concerns, Prescott said 60 percent of all development was being carried out on brownfield sites in a bid to limit the damage to the countryside.
"All new development, commercial and residential, will use previously developed land where available, we must prevent urban sprawl over the green belt," he said.
But Schoon dismissed it as a limited gesture. "We would see that 60 percent brownfield target increased to at least 75 percent," he said.
The so-called "communities plan" has identified four target areas for expansion: Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, Ashford in Kent, Stansted in Essex and the Thames Gateway in east London.
"COMMUNITIES NOT ISOLATED ESTATES"
Just 162,000 new homes were built in 2001 - the lowest figure for 75 years - and that has been blamed for spiralling housing costs.
The deputy prime minister told MPs the building programme was designed to dampen costs, allowing lower paid public sector workers to get a foothold on the property ladder.
Prescott said the proposals were about building "communities" with strong infrastructure, not isolated housing estates.
"The plan is part of the government's programme to deliver better public services, strengthen economic performance and improve our quality of life," Prescott told the House of Commons.
That included providing better transport links, jobs and improved schools and hospitals, he added.
Plans for transforming run-down communities in the north of England were also included in the package.
Responding to Prescott's announcement, opposition Conservative spokesman David Davis said they were plans to "Bulldoze the north and concrete the south".
But supporters of the government's development plans believe environmental campaigners are exaggerating the effects of the building on the countryside.
Professor Sir Peter Hall, professor of planning at University College London, said 89 percent of England was currently undeveloped.
"We are greatly exaggerating the scale of the problem," he told BBC radio. "It would take us 40 or 50 generations of building to completely destroy the countryside."
