CPRE Herefordshire Annual Report 2003
Dominating all our activity in 2002 was the Draft Unitary Development Plan and our response to it. The work involved was considerable but we met the deadline and a summary of our response follows. Central to our concern is the lack of any coherent definition of 'sustainability' to provide the framework for the Plan - an issue which we will pursue during the coming year before the Plan is put on Deposit later this year or early in 2004.
The bulk of the work in preparing our response was done by CPRE's Policy Group co-ordinated by Peter Beresford to whom we a special debt of thanks.
Alongside the UDP, another major issue was the proposed Rotherwas Access Road. Our continued representations that the route proposed went against the Council's own advice and that as a consequence was far more expensive than other options, including that proposed by CPRE, were unsuccessful in affecting the outcome which was the Councils decision, in February this year, to go ahead.
We also found time to deal with a range of other policy issues including:
These are just a few of the issues we have been involved with. Work continues on dealing with planning applications (see the Planning Group report), monitoring hedgerow removals, and ensuring that CPRE's voice is heard on a very wide range of policy groups within the county. A new campaign in 2003 will be CPRE's "Dark Skies' campaign to reclaim the night sky from security lights, over zealous street lighting and other forms of light pollution.
All this is carried out by a small group of volunteers supported by our National Office. The strength of our voice is dependant on the strength of our membership. The more members we have the more authority we carry. One of the most significant contributions that a CPRE member can make is to recruit another member!
My thanks to all of our volunteers for the hard work they have put in during 2002 and for the support they have given me as chairman. Herefordshire is a unique county with a landscape that deserves all our efforts to protect it. Thank you to all our members for their continued support.
CPRE Herefordshire Branch: Strategic Plan: How well are we doing?
Achieved 2002
Supplementary Planning Guide on Design
Abandonment of eastern by pass route
Unitary Development Plan – First Deposit draft – Submission December 2002
Meeting Chris Chappell - Cabinet member for Economic Development
Quiet Lanes campaigns - Ledbury through 2002
Speakers pack
Councillor briefings
AGM
Links with other agencies established
Annual Report
Membership events – AGM in October 2002; North Herefordshire event at Dunkerton's in Spring; Plaque for orchard and picnic in June.
Recruitment leaflet - February
Legacy campaign - Spring
Not achieved
1st road show event - June 2002
Rotherwas access to follow consultant’s proposed route
Traffic management schemes introduced into Hereford City including cross city bus routes and target set for 10% reduction in car use
Abandonment of urban development agenda
Recognition of need to preserve ‘rurality’ and for economic development to be based on this
A UDP we can 95% agree with!
Environment to be ‘overarching’ rather than ‘golden thread’ for Herefordshire Partnership
Volunteer post recruited – Spring 2002
Ten percent membership growth by AGM 2002
Average 10 new volunteers pa
Recruitment of press volunteer
Re-activation of North West Hereford District Group - May 2002 onwards
A significant number of non-achievements relate to membership growth. Our Branch Development Office, Stella Woodman, has done sterling work over the year in organising events and recruitment opportunities but the results have been disappointing. CPRE is not alone in finding it increasingly difficult to recruit volunteers and maintain membership growth: other charities find similar problems, Any ideas that members have to help us tackle this problem will be gratefully received.
Monitoring planning applications throughout the County is a vital role which we undertake in an endeavour to ensure, as far as possible, that the CPRE core values are protected. However, it will be obvious that with in excess of 3400 applications lodged each year in the County our small band of active volunteers do depend on help and assistance from members in alerting us to potentially damaging development proposals of which they may become aware in their neighbourhood.
The vast majority of planning applications – 3130 of the 3445 in 2002 – are decided by the professional planning case officer under what are known as "delegated powers". The balance of cases are referred to the appropriate Area Planning Sub-Committee (Central, Northern & Southern) and exceptionally the full Planning Committee for decision. The elected Councillors sit on these planning committees which meet monthly. The Government "called in" two particularly controversial applications proposing, amongst other things, new housing in open countryside which the Planning Committee were "minded" to approve. The Secretary of State’s decisions affecting these developments on which this Branch made representations are awaited.
The right of appeal against the grant of planning approval is available to all applicants but this right in not extended to third parties eg. objectors. Of the 64 planning appeals lodged in the County in 2002, 82% were dismissed by the independent Planning Inspectorate. We have been involved in several of these cases.
We touched on the contentious subject of planning enforcement in the 2001/2002 Annual Report. Herefordshire Council Planning Committee has now endorsed a new Planning Enforcement Policy which is designed to meet the aim of a system that is effective and as simple and quick as it can be, and has a central role in terms priority and resource. There is no doubt that public confidence in the planning process is quickly undermined if little or nothing is done when unauthorised development takes place.
The continued support of members in the vitally important planning field over the last year has been greatly appreciated.
At the time of writing it is only six months since the last Annual Report was published - I hope six monthly AGM's do not become a regular feature! My natural instinct is to go into semi-hibernation in winter, to close thedoors, take the phone off the hook and take time to think and plan - unfortunately I did not get much time to do this!
From my perspective its been rather an odd nine months which did not go quite to plan as most of the summer and autumn saw virtually all the Branch volunteers working their socks off responding to the UDP. With such a major task running to a deadline it was inevitable that I became involved too, if only to support the work others were doing. Hot on the heels of the UDP was the Rotherwas Access Road issue and it was only after Christmas that some of us were able to close the policy file for a while and get back to the basics of recruitment, publicity and membership activities.
The idea to have a small development support group came out of the Away Day volunteers attended last year. It first met in January 2003 and set about reviewing what I had done so, the lessons we could learn, the expectations everyone had and then discussing ways and means of carrying the work forward. I have already come to value the support and enthusiasm of this small team. One of the first key decisions we made was to increase the CPRE presence at events around the County and to take as many opportunities to get our message across as we are able to. This requires teamwork - do let me know if you know of any event we should consider attending in your area and if you can help with this, that would be much appreciated. I will try to let members know of such events via the News Update. We are also considering a series of static displays [probably during the autumn/winter] at such venues as libraries.
One of the results of my winter ruminations was an idea to make more use of the Internet. Although I know not everyone uses the Internet, many people do and in a rural county it is one of the most cost effective and easy ways to communicate with people. The loss of the Greengate Network and website was a blow but we now have our own website: www.cpreherefordshire.org.uk . See CPRE Herefordshire for more on this. The UDP era also illustrated some of the difficulties volunteers faced when dealing with large quantities of paperwork using email. We are hoping to have a CPRE Herefordshire Extranet area on the Internet during 2003, this will enable us to use the Internet, rather than volunteers' personal computers, as a huge filing cabinet which members can have access to. This should greatly improve internal communications as well as making it possible for more members to see documents and CPRE responses on local matters if they wish to, also cutting out a great deal of photocopying and postage. I hope you are all enjoying and finding the News Update interesting and useful. If you ever get the urge to put pen to paper yourself on a particular local CPRE issue, or would like to share a triumph or a failure - experience is never wasted! - don't feel shy about sending me your 'members views' - it would be really good to have that as a regular feature. By the time you read this the 2003 events programme will be well on its way. I hope you have found something amongst them to enjoy and if you have any brilliant ideas for 2004 please give me a ring! Which leads me to my final 'thought for the day' - I did a small calculation the other day and realised that [excluding the Ledbury Group] all the researching, consultation, advocacy, publicity, recruitment and administration is carried out by less than 5% of the membership! These volunteers achieve a great deal and work very hard - think how much more we could achieve for the Herefordshire countryside if we had more volunteers.
Ledbury & District District Group
Under the aegis of the County Branch, Ledbury group works at local level, covering the Herefordshire wards surrounding Ledbury.
This year’s AGM on Saturday 19 July at Colwall Church Ale House, followed by a reception at nearby Glebe House, will report another successful year, for example:
The past year has seen vindication, if any were needed, for CPRE’s national strategy of strengthening policy and lobbying capacity in the country’s regions. CPRE West Midlands is probably now one of the most effective voluntary bodies in the environmental field in getting its voice heard and taken notice of in the new regional fora. During the Public Examination on the draft Regional Policy Guidance (RPG), for example, CPRE’s West Midlands Regional Group was acknowledged to have made a highly professional and convincing case on a variety of environmental issues. This substantial effort was duly reflected in the Panel Report of October 2002. The group’s influential work on airports, campaigning to prevent new runways on sensitive green fields sites, has also been recognised. Part of the success of the regional group is down to having a paid policy officer and volunteers with specialist knowledge.
Herefordshire CPRE has continued to play as active a part as feasible, given our position on the geographical periphery of a region to which many in the county doubt we naturally belong. Distances and poor transport links to Birmingham also limit the contribution we can sensibly make to CPRE regional group work. But we send volunteers to nearly every meeting, including those of the relevant sub-groups.
The Regional Group has recognised that some of the metropolitan and urban issues they inevitably have to address are of limited relevance for Herefordshire. They have given us help and support where they can, e.g. on issues like the Rotherwas Access road and Herefordshire’s Unitary Development Plan (UDP). The regional group is also encouraging Shropshire and Herefordshire CPRE Branches to work closely on sub-regional issues, like the proposed A49 economic corridor and the landscape impact of alternative energy schemes. The two Branches are planning an initial meeting in Leominster in July.