‘It’s bog-standard rural England, and it’s wonderful’

Well its out now – the new NPPF and after all the fuss – I don’t see that much has changed. This article suggests the watering down undertaken – although the presumption in favour of sustainable development remains – has brought much needed balm to many dwellers in average rural England. It tells us:

Eynsham lies just outside the Oxford Green Belt. It is not protected land, nor an area of outstanding natural beauty. “It is just bog-standard English countryside,” says Helen Marshall, of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE). “And it’s wonderful.”

Although the revised national planning-policy framework has guaranteed pre-existing protection for the Green Belt, sites of special scientific interest and national parks, it is the hundreds of ordinary, unprotected areas such as the fields west of Eynsham which campaigners and local residents have been worrying about.

“It’s not striking and dramatic land, but it’s very much loved. Ordinary, local people have access to it,” Ms Marshall said. “Developers have been trying to build here since the 1970s and always people have been able to push it back. The anxiety has been that, if the rules are changed, whether or not the safeguards are going to be there to enable locals to protect the land that they love.”

I guess it is good that this latest version of the NPPF pours oil on troubled waters. I still think that there are larger economic forces at work which are making it increasingly difficult to find work or somewhere to live in rural England and I wonder if this debate about planning is a bit of a side show from a macro-economic perspective.

I also have some concerns about the “exclusive” nature of the example in this article. I would like to know what the provenance, in this context, of “locals” is. I suspect it means people with personal means to buy residential property close to Oxford. As the article goes on to say there is plenty of empty property and brownfield land available to accommodate other people – potentially I suspect those with less in the way of resources. In the current climate, lest you are thinking I am making a class point, just have a ponder on the challenges facing anyone under 30 of getting onto the property ladder anywhere in rural England.