Britain's environmental heritage at risk, warns CPRE

Britain risks losing its "fabulous inheritance of landscape and wildlife" as the Government allows developments - including its flagship eco-town projects - to spring up across the countryside, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has warned.

By Louise Gray and Stephen Adams Last Updated: 6:09PM GMT 27 Oct 2008
The CPRE has accused ministers of ignoring its own independent advisor, Natural England, on a host of important environmental issues.
Two years after Natural England was set up to "act as a powerful champion for the natural environment", the Government has yet to prove it is serious about protecting the countryside, according to the CPRE.
Tom Oliver, head of rural policy at CPRE, said: "Its approach to eco-towns is part of the malaise in the Government's approach to planning.
"Our view is: good idea, bad way of going about it."
Environmental standards within eco-towns, while higher than elsewhere, will be "nothing like high enough", he said.
Colleague Kate Gordon, the CPRE's senior planner, also questioned why such standards were not being applied across the board.
Ministers want to build three million homes by 2020, she said, but only around five per cent of those will be in eco-towns.
She commented: "At a local or regional scale they will be quite large numbers. Councils are being asked the impossible."
She also queried the Government's insistence on eco-towns containing a minimum of 5,000 homes: "The Government is saying, 'They must be more than 5,000 homes because they won't attract the innovation below that'. But that's rubbish," she said.
The CPRE attack came days after Department for Communities and Local Government officials concluded "only one or two" of the 15 short-listed eco-towns sites were viable.
The CPRE also criticised the Government's wider environmental decisions since Natural England was created in 2006.
"Huge sums of public money" are still being pumped into controversial road-building schemes that will "shatter the tranquillity of the countryside", the group said.
Allowing more flights from Stansted Airport in Essex, "will inflict additional pollution and noise on the surrounding population" including medieval Hatfield Forest, it claimed.
Long term renewable energy solutions like wave and tidal power are being ignored in favour of "a narrow policy or reliance on large amounts of onshore wind energy", it said.
And it criticised the Planning Bill as being "a danger to democracy and the environment", by reducing people's ability to scrutinise major infrastructure projects and taking decisions out of ministers' hands.
Mr Oliver said: "On aviation and airports, road building, renewable energy and the planning process, Government policy appears to be giving little weight to Natural England's advice."
He added: "Unless the Government really listens to Natural England, the nation risks losing its fabulous inheritance of landscape and wildlife through bad decisions.
A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) rebuffed the accusations.He said: "Protecting the natural environment is central to the Government's decisions. Along with a number of other bodies Natural England provides valuable advice and is an effective champion of the natural environment.
"However, it is up to government to take the tough decisions that balance the environmental, economic and social needs of modern Britain."