Our vision for planning launches!

Today CPRE joined forces with 17 other organisations to launch our ‘Vision for Planning’ – our answer to the Government’s damaging new changes.  We’re calling on the government to rethink major elements of its controversial planning proposals and work with stakeholders to deliver a planning system that puts people, climate and nature at its heart.

We’ve worked with a broad and united coalition of 18 housing, planning, transport, environmental, heritage and public health organisations to forge our own alternative ‘Vision for planning’ in response to the government’s Planning White Paper, published in August last year. The government is expected to make a further announcement in March about whether and how it will take forward the proposals in the White Paper.

CPRE’s Tom Fyans said:-

‘Today, we’re calling on the government to plan back better and work with us to develop a planning system that puts people, and tackling the climate and ecological emergencies at its heart.  We all deserve a home we can genuinely afford to live in, and to have a say in shaping the communities around us.  And for over 70 years, a toolbox has been in place to make sure that can happen: the planning system.  But as things stand, under the government’s current proposals, the opportunity to influence what happens and where in our communities would be halved.

‘Before Christmas, the government announced a welcome revision of its housing numbers ‘algorithm’.  However, this was only one small part of a range of potentially damaging proposals put forward by the government last year.  That’s why we’re calling on Ministers to take an equally pragmatic approach to improving policies relating to community voice, affordable homes and access to green spaces.  Together, we can develop a planning system fit for the 21^st century.’

The story so far…..

On 6 August, government introduced changes to the planning system that would drastically reduce the ability of people to make decisions that affect them, reduce the numbers of  genuinely affordable homes required of developers and leave the decisions on housing numbers to be made by computer algorithms.

Since then…

• More than 300,000 people have signed petitions opposing the proposals
• 46 MPs spoke out against the proposals at parliamentary debate in October, including former PM Theresa May
• Almost every CPRE local group attended a private roundtable with Robert Jenrick
• And a campaigning success! – at the end of 2020 the Government made a U-turn on its centralised housing algorithm

‘Vision for Planning’ marks the next step of our campaign for a planning system that provides much-needed housing in a sustainable way.  The members of the coalition are:-

ARC (Amphibian and Reptile Conservation)

Association of Local Environmental Records Centres

Bat Conservation Trust

Campaign for National Parks

CPRE The countryside charity

Cycling UK

Friends of the Earth

Green Alliance

Mammal Society

Open Spaces Society

Ramblers

RSPB

The Heritage Alliance

Town and Country Planning Association

UK Green Building Council

Wildlife and Countryside Link

Wildlife Trusts

Woodland Trust