IS THERE TIME FOR TRANQUILLITY?
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 23rd March 2007)

Last October I told you that the C.P.R.E. has found a way of measuring peacefulness and introduced you to our Tranquillity Map. I also gave you our definition of tranquillity – “ the quality of calm experienced in places with mainly natural features and activities.”
I said that this word, as we have newly defined it, should be familiar to politicians and planners. My hopes have been answered. A fortnight ago a Tranquillity Bill was introduced in the House of Commons.
Mr. David Penrose, having distributed copies of our Tranquillity Map to his fellow M.P.s, told the House that the C.P.R.E. had provided, for the first time ever, “a quantified, logically evidenced and robust way of measuring tranquillity across the country.”
“If you go out at night and look around, do you see street lights or starlight? If you go out looking for peace and quiet, what do you hear, jumbo jets and juggernauts, or birdsong? If you want to find a beautiful view and you go out and lift up your eyes unto the hills, do you, in fact, see hills, or high rises?….That is what tranquillity is about and why it is so important. It is not just about preserving green spaces; it is about the way our country feels.”
At the moment, his bill has only two clauses. One says that the Government should report on, and publish, tranquillity measurements, the other that planning authorities should have a duty to preserve and enhance tranquillity.
This is not the only C.P.R.E.-inspired piece of legislation in the pipeline. Last December, Mr. Alan Duncan, with our knowledge and blessing, introduced a Streetscape and Highways Design Bill.
This bill wants highway authorities to publish policies on the design of traffic signs, ensure that there are no more signs than necessary and that their impact on the environment is minimal. In other words, street clutter is to be taken seriously.
Mr. Duncan’s bill might have been given a second reading two weeks ago but there was not enough time, so this second reading is due to take place today.
And very likely there may not be enough time today, or at any time during the present session, and that neither the Tranquillity Bill nor the Streetscape Bill will ever be passed. Such is the general fate of private members’ bills.
Never mind. The issues of tranquillity and street clutter have been raised publicly at a national level, and the body politic, having been prodded may, discreetly, take notice. Before long the Government will produce a white paper on planning. These two issues may well appear in it.

GREENING THE POLITICIANS
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 9th March 2007)

A few years ago I struck up an internet acquaintance with the website of an American organization called Environmental Defense and from that day to this I have been bombarded with transatlantic e-mails.
I have read those e-mails and sympathised with our fellow environmentalists who have been trying desperately, but it seemed vainly, to change the habits of the most polluting nation on earth. What could these well-meaning people do in the face of that brusque rejection of the Kyoto Agreement and a president who is no ally to conservation?
Here was a determined lobby, but a minority, not strong enough to force the hands of politicians.
However, in the past two or three months the tone of these e-mails has changed. Hope and longing have turned to triumph. At long last America seems to be waking up to the fact that its wide open spaces are not limitless and that drastic action must be taken if ecological disaster is to be avoided.
One of the latest e-mails announces the first “Global Warming Globie” awards. Over 20,000 people who visit the Environmental Defense site have cast their votes and certain individuals and firms have been held up to praise or execration.
For instance, Al Gore has won a prize for the Best Film on Global Warming, (and incidentally also received an oscar from Hollywood), while the Most Egregious Contribution to Public Ignorance and Denial has been made by Senator James Inhofe for calling global warming “the greatest hoax perpetrated on humankind.”
As in America, so in England. Our minority lobby has likewise grown suddenly powerful. Like our transatlantic cousins, we are starting to put effective pressure on politicians.
Nine leading environmental organisations, including Greenpeace, the National Trust, Friends of the Earth and, needless to say, ourselves, have just ganged up to assess our three main political parties on a number of green issues.
We want to know which of the three will best protect the beauty, accessibility and wildlife of the environment, will best support and develop the planning system to protect and enhance the countryside, and will provide the best international leadership to restrict global temperature rises.
The first assessment of the parties’ performances against these and other tests will be published in September, just before the party conference season. Other assessments will follow and the final one will appear a little way ahead of the next General Election.
The next incumbent of the White House will probably ride in, not as a traditional white knight, but as a green one. So, we hope, will the leader of our next Parliament.

STAR-GAZING: The Campaign Against Light Pollution
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 23rd February 2007)

Do you know any of the constellations?
You can probably recognise The Plough or Big Dipper, those detached seven stars in the northern hemisphere and may know that an imaginary line joining the two stars on the right leads to the Pole Star.
If you know any other constellation then it will be Orion, that bright rectangle with the three slanting stars in the middle.
Orion, so legend has it, was a mighty hunter, who was killed by a scorpion. The gods placed him in the sky next to Taurus, which he threatens with his bow, and safely away from Scorpio, who is on the other side of the heavens.
He has some impressive stars. Betelgeuse, a red giant, marks Orion’s right shoulder, as he faces us, and Rigel, the sixth brightest star in the heavens, his left foot. Orion’s seven principal stars are very visible; so is the outline of his bow and upraised right arm.
And just because Orion is so recognisable we have used him for a star count. We, on this occasion, being the C.P.R.E. and the British Astronomical Association’s Campaign for Dark Skies.
We asked almost two thousand people to count the number of stars they could see, in and around Orion. Unhappily the sky is not very dark these days.
So 54% could see only up to ten stars; a mere 2% could make out thirty-one to forty. Yet on a moonless night and with the naked eye you should be able to make out about fifty stars in the area of this constellation.
Twenty-two of our observers had a postcode beginning with the letters CV. One of them, saw nineteen stars. The others saw between two and fifteen. An individual who lived in CV34 could see four.
Badly directed security lighting and the glow from distant towns have robbed us of a wonderful natural heritage.
One observer, who lives in Birmingham, told us “ I grew up in East Africa with a firmament of stars over my head. They were the roof to my world.
Once a year I go to rural Wales, wait for a clear night, and then lie looking up at the stars. It’s as if I have put the roof back on to my world.
We would like to put that roof back for as many people as possible. So to start off this campaign here is a standard for measuring light pollution. For we intend to follow this survey with others.
We will compare them and see whether this particular battle is being won or lost.

LOBBY HARD TO STOP THIS HORROR
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 9th February 2007)

In conservation, as in war, combined operations are always effective and often essential.
The C.P.R.E. is one of many, many organisations with the same general objective, that the countryside we love shall be protected and enhanced for us and for posterity. Threatened with a major crisis we make common cause with some of our allies.
Our latest combined operation is called Planning Disaster and we join hands with The Civic Trust, Friends of the Earth, The Ramblers Association, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Transport 2000, The Wildlife Trusts and The Woodland Trust.
In fact, this particular alliance dates from 2002, when the Green Paper on Planning appeared, whose aim was to hand the planning system over to big business. Happily, that threat was quietly eliminated before the subsequent Act of Parliament was drafted.
The disaster with which we are presently faced is the same one, but in a slightly different disguise. The green paper bowed down to the great developers; the Barker Review bows down to economic benefit.
Yes, the Barker Review, of which you have already had two columns full this year and must now have a third, because it is a very real and dangerous threat to us all.
Here is Miss Barker’s first recommendation: “When, in the plan led system, a plan is out of date or indeterminate, applications should be approved unless there is good reason to believe the costs outweigh the benefits.” There is already a pro development bias in the planning system; this would make things much, much worse.
Recommendation 3 wants the planning system to take more notice of “market signals…to ensure the efficient use of land.” An amusement arcade will make money, so build it, if need be on a school playing field.
Recommendation 4 wants to remove the needs test in determining applications for retail development. Watch out, High Street, or the out of town supermarkets will kill you off.
Recommendation 9 says that the boundaries of Green Belts should be “reviewed.” The Green Belts have endured for half a century; now we are in danger of losing them.
Recommendation 31 proposes that business should offer “community goodwill” payments to facilitate development. This happens already; it is underhand, immoral, corrupting; it should be forbidden, not encouraged.
We shall lobby, long and hard, to see that none of these horrors appear in the White Paper on Planning that is due on about 20th March. Thereafter, we shall lobby, long and hard, to see that none of them appear in the legislation that will surely follow.

M.P.s COMBINE TO PROTECT THE GREEN BELT
Our Press Release on Monday, 5th February, 2007

The Government is putting pressure on the West Midlands Regional Assembly to find land for up to 575,000 more dwellings in the West Midlands in the 25 years from 2001 to 2026.

Not only is this half as many again as are currently planned for, but it poses a threat to large areas of greenfield land. Over 14,600 acres, (nearly 23 square miles), of greenfield land would be lost to development.
Under draft plans from the Regional Assembly Solihull would be required to provide up to 18,000 new dwellings by 2026, which would gobble up 480 acres of greenfield land, an increase of 19.3% on the number of occupied dwellings in 2001.

Since the present developed area of Solihull adjoins the Green Belt to the south and east that, too, is under threat.

The C.P.R.E. regards these proposals as totally unacceptable and we held a meeting last Friday, 2nd February, in the Women’s Institute Hall, Solihull, attended by 60 people to protest about them.

Peter Langley, vice chairman of the West Midlands Region of the C.P.R.E., said that we needed many more houses and people were moving to the West Midlands from London and the South East, but doubted the figures offered by the Regional Assembly and did not want to lose land in the Green Belt. In particular, he did not want to see Solihull ruined.
“Solihull is a lovely place,” he said. “We want to keep it that way. We mustn’t let it be ruined by a numbers game.”

Caroline Spelman, the M.P. for Meriden, had introduced a private members’ bill in Parliament to prevent gardens of houses being regarded as brownfield land suitable for the building of dwellings, but it had been talked out. She told the meeting that 7,000 people in her constituency needed homes, but said too many houses had already been built in the back gardens of other houses.

She was deeply suspicious of the West Midlands Regional Assembly, an unelected quango. “The provision of housing should come from the grass roots up,” she told the meeting. “A democratically elected local Council is far better at projecting how many homes are needed.”

Lorely Burt, M.P. for Solihull, agreed with her. “I see no justification for an unelected quango telling us that we must build more houses,” she said. “The motto for Solihull is Rus in Urbs and we must keep it that way.”
She was firmly against the “predict and provide” policy. “If we use that policy Solihull will not be a lovely place,” she declared.

Those who felt strongly about this matter were urged by the speakers to make their views known to their M.P.s and the Regional Assembly.

The proposals relate to all areas of Warwickshire with more or less effect. The most significant impact is on Rugby, Nuneaton, Warwick and Coventry. The statistics for 2001 to 2026 are in the Table below

District/Borough/City	Households in 2001	Existing Targets	Proposed Targets	Potential acres Greenfield lost
Coventry	122,353	19,000	44,000	Not estimated
North Warwickshire	25,176	3,100	3,900	Not estimated
Nuneaton & Bedworth	48,683	10,000	15,600	560
Rugby	36,483	7,100	23,100	1,400
Stratford-on-Avon	47,202	7,200	9,300	Not estimated
Warwick District	53,356	11,600	15,600	330
WARWICKSHIRE	210,900	39,000	67,500	Not estimated

 

SHALL WE NEED ALL THESE HOUSES?
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 26th January 2007)

Every now and then the Government tells us how many more houses it thinks we must build over the next twenty years or so.
The West Midlands Regional Assembly, representing every planning authority in the area, looks at this figure and makes an estimate of its own. Three years ago the Assembly decided that 381,000 more houses were needed for the West Midlands by 2026. Three years later this has risen to 575,000. For Warwickshire the number of new houses has risen steeply, from 39,000 to 67,500.
Shall we need all these houses?
The birth rate is rising, slightly. So is the divorce rate. The marriage rate is falling. More old people are living on their own and youngsters flee the family nest earlier. People are migrating to the West Midlands in rather large numbers, from home and abroad.
Yet forecasting a quarter of a century ahead is tricky and the latest prod from Westminster has been influenced by Kate Barker who, without giving detailed figures, has told us that to bring house prices down the demand for housing must be met in full. In other words, there should be a wholesale building spree.
Needless to say, we are concerned about the loss of greenfield land and especially about the West Midlands Green Belt, whose boundaries, Miss Barker declares, should be “reviewed”, an ominous euphemism. Warwick District is particularly threatened. The number of projected houses has risen from 11,600 to 15,600.
It is said that the projected figures are no more than the annual rate achieved in the Warwick area over the past few years. However, this is only because two very large areas, at south west Warwick and Warwick Gates, have been developed during this time. No more such large areas have been allocated. If they are they will have to be greenfield sites.
More housing is needed, we accept this, and it will take a great deal of careful planning, goodwill and common sense to build it without desecrating the countryside, or indeed the towns.
So to give this matter an airing we are holding a public meeting, on Friday, 2nd February, in Solihull. The speakers will be Caroline Spelman, M.P. for Meriden, Lorely Burt, M.P. for Solihull, and the Peter Langley, Vice-Chairman of the West Midlands C.P.R.E. The venue is the Women’s Institute Hall in Union Street, and the meeting starts at 7.15 p.m.
The discussion will be mostly about Solihull, but this issue concerns the whole of Warwickshire and everyone should be aware of it. So it will be worth your while to join us, even if it means trekking across the county.

 

IS THIS THE END OF OUR GREEN BELT?
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 12th January 2007)

In my last column I said that for us 2007 would be the Year of the Post Office. 2,500 post offices are threatened with closure, mainly in rural areas, so fifty of the victims at least will probably be in Warwickshire. I asked you to telephone or e-mail us about this matter, but gave you an incorrect e-mail address, so here is the right one: office@cprewarwickshire.org.uk
The C.P.R.E. is also very concerned about the Barker Report.
There are too many people in this country and not enough houses. So house prices have soared, by an average of 2.4% per annum over the past thirty years, way beyond the reach of first time buyers. Our population is also soaring; apart from births, we gain an immigrant every minute.
The Government commissioned an economist from the Bank of England, Kate Barker, to report on the matter. She told the Government that if the rise in house prices is to fall to the European Union average 120,000 more private houses must be built every year.
And where will all these houses be built?
The Barker Report recommends a widespread “review” of Green Belt boundaries, which euphemism probably means “abolition”, for they might be replaced by “green wedges” or “green corridors,” with gaps for homes and other development.
Green Belts exist to prevent sprawl. If this principle were sacrificed we would never retrieve it. The attacks on the Green Belt, already ceaseless, would multiply and become irresistible. A deadly blow to our environment.
The report recommends that there should be a new Planning Commission to deal with major projects, such as nuclear power stations, airports and roads.
The infamous Green Paper that preceded The Planning Act of 2004 proposed the very same thing. No longer would the Secretary of State be ultimately responsible for deciding these matters; his power would be handed over to unelected bureaucrats. A deadly blow to democracy.
Supermarkets are limited by a needs test; they may be built only if the local population needs more retailers. This test would be abolished, so many more town centres, already under threat from out of town shopping, would collapse.
These suggestions are all extremely dangerous. One suggestion, however, is more than dangerous. It is evil.
Recommendation 31 reads thus: “Business should make use of the potential to offer direct community goodwill payments on a voluntary basis when this may help to facilitate development.” The Barker Report commends, and recommends, BRIBERY! Will the Government, do you think, accept this recommendation….?!!!

LET’S TRY TO SAVE OUR POST OFFICES
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 29th December 2006)

On 14th December, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Alistair Darling, told the House of Commons that about 2,500 post offices would have to close. A cloud of hornets rose from every corner of the chamber and buzzed angrily round him for the next hour.
This was his case. Post offices are where people post letters, pay their utility bills and collect benefits. But more and more of us send messages by e-mail, pay bills over the internet or by direct debit, and have our pensions paid into our bank accounts. The Post Office has lost four million customers over the past two years.
Of the present 14,300 post offices only 4,000 are commercially viable and the Post Office lost £4 million every week last year, twice the sum it lost in 2005. So the Government proposes to withdraw its subsidies from 2,500 post offices.
The majority of these post offices are in rural areas and their loss will be felt keenly, for in many villages and hamlets they are the last remaining public facility. Here is our case for keeping them.
The social benefits of post offices are beyond price. We meet each other at the village post office and as we meet are reminded that we belong to a community. It is here that our fellow residents who teach yoga and the guitar, babysit and clean homes, canvass for news of lost cats and mourn loved relatives, put up handwritten notices. In a dehumanised world, the village post office is blessedly, reassuringly human.
The post office is usually a general store and often sells local produce. The more local produce is sold there the fewer journeys are made by lorries and container ships. Very soon we may have to curtail importing food from neighbouring counties, let alone from the antipodes. The sooner good outlets for home grown food are established in every village the better.
Many of us still pick up our pensions and pay for our driving licences at our post offices and if the Government is wise it will extend banking facilities there. Why should every post office not have a free cash machine?
The post office has a vital social and economic role. That last sentence is not mine; it is Mr. Darling’s. I hold him to it. If 2,500 post offices close the hearts will be ripped out of many a village and hamlet and, our National Office has calculated, produce at least thirty to forty million more car miles a year.
Before the closures are announced there will be a period of consultation, ending on 8th March. Who is to be consulted? How are they to be consulted? Which post offices will close and how will each closure be justified? We must know the answers to these questions.
So here is our first and biggest campaign for 2007. This is the year of the Post Office.

EIGHT DECADES OF ACHIEVEMENT
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 22nd December 2006)

2006 was the year in which The Campaign to Protect Rural England completed its eighth decade.
Amenity societies are born out of specific issues. Eighty years ago ribbon development was sending towns and cities sprawling haphazardly out into the countryside and the threat that this would continue until the words “town” and “country” lost all meaning brought us into being.
It was we who thought of putting a ring of open land round London, which led to the creation of Green Belts. It was we who mooted National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It was we who campaigned for a comprehensive planning system, which was created by The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947.
With the threat of ribbon development still in mind, we backed and encouraged the recent move to develop brownfield sites before greenfield. We have fought to control out of town supermarkets, which have ruined so many shopping high streets, and the wrong sort of farming, which has ruined so much of the countryside.
There, in three short paragraphs, is a handful of our most notable achievements.
Eighty years calls for celebration. So on 2nd November, our patron, Her Majesty The Queen, who incidentally came into the world a few months before we did, gave us a splendid reception at St. James’ Palace, graced with English food and wines.
We marked 2006 with a coffee table book, A Portrait of England, a compilation of beautiful photographs, with articles by David and Jonathan Dimbleby, Griff Rhys Jones, Alan Titchmarsh and others, and created a pink, rambling rose called Rural England.
We also commissioned a celebratory poll from YouGov, in which 2,465 adults took part.
The respondents were asked how often they visited the countryside for leisure, or left their countryside homes specifically for leisure. 45% visited the countryside once a month, 54% once a quarter and 79% at least a few times a year. Excellent.
Could the respondents name any organisation that worked to protect and improve the countryside? The National Trust scored 24% and we came second with 11%. Not too bad. What did the respondents know about the C.P.R.E.? 32% had heard of us but knew nothing about us; 44% had never heard of us. So the initials C.P.R.E. do mean something to 56% of us, which for an amenity society with a not particularly high public profile might be a good deal worse.
A happy birthday for us, a happy Christmas, we hope, for everybody, and when we meet again in the New Year I will tell you about our campaigns for 2007.

IT'S TIME TO FIGHT FOR OUR POST OFFICES
Friday, 15th December, 2006

Between 1999 and 2004 Great Britain lost 3,700 post offices. Now
the Government has unveiled its investment package for the Post Office, which tells us that 2,500 more post offices will be lost - most of them in the countryside. This is an appalling threat to the countryside and one that we condemn wholeheartedly.

Post Offices are vitally important to village life:

1.. They are social centres, places where people meet and feel that they belong to a community, and are as important in this respect as village halls, pubs and schools.
2.. Post offices are almost always shops as well, acting as outlets for the entrepreneurial activity in the countryside around, places for instance where local produce can be sold.
3.. If 2, 500 more post offices close the C.P.R.E. conservatively
estimates that this will create 30 to 40 million more road miles a year.

The Government talks of "500 innovative outlets" for small,
remote communities, including mobile post offices and services. This is better than nothing but no substitute whatever for permanent post offices.

The wholesale closure of post offices has already drain the
social life blood from many a village and hamlet. We roundly condemn any plans to close more post offices.

Accordingly, if you know of any threatened closure throughout
the county of Warwick we should like to hear from you immediately. Contact us at 01926 494597 or at our e-mail address: office@cprewarwickshire.org.uk

RECYCLING: WE MUST DO BETTER
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 8th December 2006)

Autumn laid a gentle, leisurely hand on the countryside this year. Slowly, reluctantly, green turned to golden rust and still the trees and hedgerows are not quite bare. Nevertheless, when I put out my wheelie bin last week it was packed solid with leaves.
Three years ago these leaves would have joined other household refuse as landfill. Happily, local authorities now turn garden waste into compost. Sound economy. Sound ecology. What Nature discards is intended to renew and refresh the earth; it should be used to do so.
Garden waste from the Warwick district is composted at the Bubbenhall Landfill Site. There the lorries empty out leaves and greenery into a pile about twenty feet high. Once a month a shredder slices everything up, even small logs, even the host of domestic Christmas trees it will encounter a month hence, into small fragments. Then the already decomposing mass is laid out into vast oblongs called windrows.
These windrows are regularly turned over to help decomposition. Within the space of fourteen weeks herbage has turned to compost and the sooty mass is run through a machine like a riddle to eliminate plastic and similar rubbish.
Here, then, is a natural material, ready to enrich the soil. However, it is not, as you might expect, sold back to the public, for it never leaves Bubbenhall.
This site, which covers 39.5 hectares, is primarily used for the extraction of gravel and sand. The mighty holes made by these excavations are filled with household refuse, which is sealed in and covered with earth. Until recently, garden and household waste rotted together. Now, the new compost is used to enrich the newly laid earth. Crops are sown. The countryside looks exactly as it did before the excavations began.
It was in March, 2003, that garden waste was first collected in the Warwick district. At present, about 24,000 households have wheelie bins, though as many more have not. Soon, it is hoped, every household will have one and, no doubt, use it.
It is not the same with the red boxes. They first appeared in April, 2003, and a year later were universal. It is likely that by 2008 they will contain not only paper, glass, tins and clothes, but plastic and cardboard as well. Yet only 30% of the district’s residents use them.
We can, we must, do better than this. The holes in the ground at Bubbenhall, and everywhere else, will not last for ever. We must recycle as much of our household waste as we possibly can, and immediately, or we shall have a crisis on our hands.

EXPECT THE WORST OVER PLANNING
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 24th November 2006)

“My Government will publish proposals to reform the planning system.” A sentence from The Queen’s Speech, a chilling one.
For Her Majesty’s Government reformed the planning system only two years ago. The Planning Act of 2004 eliminated county councils from their effective role and put regional councils, unelected and unaccountable, in their place. Very likely this was done to humour the European Union.
The act also abolished district local plans, which anyone could understand, and in their place created local development frameworks, whose complexity is beyond the understanding of the professional planners. Very likely this was done to alter something for the sake of altering it.
Yet unpleasant and unnecessary as these changes have been they were nothing to what Her Majesty’s Government would have liked to have done.
It wanted planning applications to be decided very quickly, so quickly that parish councils would never see them, and since parish councils are largely concerned with planning that would have been, pretty well, the end of parish councils.
It wanted applications submitted by businesses to be decided very, very quickly indeed, preferably in secret, and it wanted to set up business zones where factories and offices would be built without consulting anyone who might possibly object.
It wanted large schemes, such as extensions to airports, to be decided by the Secretary of State and public inquiries to be held only after he had made up his mind so there would be no point in having them.
These and other tyrannous, undemocratic horrors were either spelt out, or plainly hinted at, in a green paper that was as hypocritical as it was duplicitous. For what Her Majesty’s Government wanted to do was to hand the planning system over to the big corporations.
Happily, thanks to efficient lobbying by such people as ourselves, most of these unspeakable proposals were quietly discarded.
And now Her Majesty’s Government wants to have another go at the planning system. The Treasury had a large hand in drafting the earlier green paper and since the man who runs the Treasury will soon be running Her Majesty’s Government we can expect the worst.
These proposals were frightening, but it was equally frightening that television and the press almost entirely ignored them. Education, terrorism and hospitals are obviously emotive and we never stop hearing about them. Planning has a far less popular appeal, so those who should have called the public to arms never did so.

 

MAKE THIS WHITE PAPER REALLY COUNT
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 10th November 2006)

A white paper is to hand – "Strong and Prosperous Communities", published by The Department of Communities and Local Government.
The tone is brisk, no nonsensical and euphoric, so that the reader, this reader at least, feels like a small child whom a benevolent parent is hurrying firmly along, and for his own good, to an earthly utopia.
Unfortunately – for this is surely not deliberate? – the text contains so much obfuscating jargon and so many vague generalities that the reader, this reader at least, can only faintly guess at what the Government intends, or why it intends it, or indeed if it really intends anything at all.
White papers produce bills and bills are enacted. So it seems that The Department of Local Government is about to tinker, very slightly, with local government just to remind everybody that we have a Department of Local Government.
Could this act benefit ruralists? The C.P.R.E. has already made several suggestions.
We think that local authorities should have a legal duty of care to protect and enhance our historic environment, so we should like the bill to establish a national standard for the quality of the countryside.
Local authorities have to write documents called Community Strategies, to tell us what they intend to achieve. We should like these documents to give formal support to local traditions, crafts and skills, and, above all, the production of local food. Given the threat of global warming, we should not import food from abroad, nor carry it any great distance at home.
Loudly and firmly the white paper declares that local people should be given more control. But is this what the government, indeed any government, really wants? If it does, why does the white paper not mention Village Appraisals and Parish Plans, which local people are drawing up with the very intention of giving themselves more control? The bill should commend these documents and give them effective legal status in the planning system.
Enforcement is the Achilles’ heel of local planning and the developers know it. We should like this bill to help local authorities prosecute those who build, or destroy, and then, feigning ignorance, apply to have their sins condoned in the sure knowledge that the reparations, if any, will be tardy and half-hearted. These rogues should be heavily penalised and swiftly compelled to undo the harm they inflict on the countryside.
So – how will this Local Government Act turn out? A bland and forgettable public relations exercise or, with the assistance of the C.P.R.E., a parcel of effective reforms?

REVEALING THE TRANQUILLITY MAP
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 27th October 2006)

We love the countryside because it is green and growing. We love the countryside because it is peaceful.
In order to keep our countryside we lobby as politicians, planners and inspectors at public inquiries. These people are potentially on our side, but they deal in the concrete, not the abstract, because facts can be counted and measured, and emotions cannot.
So we tell the people that matter how many English acres are under the plough and how many under concrete. We tell them how many decibels are invading the green acres.
But the peace of the countryside is more than an absence of noise. It is about things mankind has inherited: mountains, fields, waterfalls; it is about things mankind has created: ploughed fields, drystone walls, coppiced woodland.
These things, the immemorial and man made, are peaceful, but their peace lies not in them but in their effect upon us. This peace is subjective. So how can it be measured?
The C.P.R.E. believes that it has found a way of measuring peacefulness.
A team of experts from two universities has interviewed 2,300 people all over England and correlated their opinions. They have divided the country into 500 by 500 metre squares and coloured each square, awarding dark green to the quietest places and bright red to the noisiest. The result is a new map, which we have just published. We call it a Tranquillity Map. The word may be literary but it is the best synonym available.
At the same time we have carefully defined the word: “Tranquillity is the quality of calm experienced in places with mainly natural features and activities, free from disturbance from man made ones.”
“Calm” means not just a lack of noise, but visual intrusion. “Experienced” tells us that calm relates to the individual; it is not just an attribute of a particular place.
“Mainly natural” includes hills and birdsong, which would exist without mankind, also villages and church bells, man made things. “Disturbance” means motorways, factories, pylons and the like.
Will this definition do? What about the man whose relaxation is to watch the traffic on the nearest motorway, but is driven mad by the bells in the local steeple that wake him from his Sunday morning lie-in?
Our definition cannot be completely objective, but we believe it is a good one and the Tranquillity Map, which combines personal information and topography, is the best we have yet produced.
We need this map; we need this word. Tranquillity must appear in government directives and local development frameworks, be familiar on the lips of politicians and planners. Tranquillity – as we have newly defined it.

PRICING RESIDENTS OUT OF THEIR VILLAGES
(Article in the Leamington Courier on 13th October 2006)

House prices soar. The property pages of this newspaper disclose a four bedroom bungalow in Bubbenhall offered at £499,950, a three bedroom cottage in Ashow at £550,000 and a two bedroom terraced cottage in Harbury at £179,950. Who can afford them?
Many people can not only afford these houses, but build themselves far larger ones, houses with five or six bedrooms, drawing rooms, living rooms, play rooms, pool rooms, bars, snugs, utilities, swimming pools, conservatories, multiple garages and much more beside. The rich abound in Warwickshire.
So do the comparatively poor. The average annual rural income is about £17,400, so the man who earns this wage and wants to live in the Harbury terraced cottage must borrow ten times his income to pay the mortgage that will hang like a millstone round his neck.
Affordable housing to the rescue. Affordable housing, which is not just for the homeless or the very poor, but for those who have a need or a right to live in a particular place.
Take, for example, people such as doctors, firemen, nurses and policemen, none of whom are very well paid. Your village has a school. Do the teachers live in your village or elsewhere?
Take a less obvious example. A young man has grown up in your village and now that he has a wife and a job, outside the village, nevertheless wants to set up house there, to continue socialising with his family and long-standing friends. But he cannot set foot on the property ladder.
Deny the teacher a place in your village and he will have to commute. Deny the young married man a place and he will be cut off from his roots.
The village will suffer, too. The teacher will have no time to meet parents and understand their children’s individual needs. The young married man will not give the village his personal contribution as a human being. Both will be lost to interesting and important social activities, such as serving on the Parish Council. So they, and many others in the same case, must be found housing outside the market.
The Affordable Rural Housing Commission told the Government recently that a minimum of 11,000 affordable homes a year are needed in rural communities.
The C.P.R.E. backs the Commission wholeheartedly. We want our hamlets, villages and market towns to represent every age and class. If Bubbenhall, Ashow and Harbury, and every other rural community, contain only the rich, as they will unless drastic and radical steps are taken in the immediate future, they will become deadly, deadly dull.