Green issues; the environment, biodiversity, sustainable development, permaculture, forestry and landscapes etc., have a large and irreversible presence on the web in printed media and in most people’s psyche also. Campaigners in such issues have prominent scientific and academic backing. European, national and local initiatives combine to create an omnipresent force, with some heavyweight NGO, Quango and Business backing.
Yet if a local planning department allow an application like this - Woodland Trust; Fighting hedgerow removal - to go ahead it would mean that all the above is merely toothless rhetoric. The shameful element to this is that this is just one current application amongst many that has been able to get into the limelight.
With the UK Government pledging to plant 1,000,000 trees a year, it can easily save existing large quantities of identified important natural resources of real value, simply by enforcement, (free to the taxpayer).
Planning departments are very powerful and many take this power seriously and respond correctly, (indeed the planning department in charge of the above may well do also – it is important to bear in mind that the above is an application and no decision has yet been reached). But the reality is that you can travel across the UK and find example after example where in similar circumstances the highly valuable and important natural resources that make up the internationally significant UK landscape have been swept away in the interests of ‘development’ either for construction or agriculture.
For example: In the village in South Devon where my mother in law lives, there is a planning application for 40 new houses. These houses are needed, there is a real genuine social and economic reason for them to be
built. However brushing aside all hope of sustainable building, the proposed construction site is quite literally a green field site which supports a very rich biodiversity and classic Devon hedgerows, (which have been identified as ‘dangerous to persons and property’ – the ultimate get out clause as all trees fall into this category at some point in their lifetime). In the consultation process, a consultant’s report, (commissioned and paid for by the developer at the insistence of the planners) states the village infrastructure is suitable, (there is a single one lane road for the existing population of 30,000 – no train and infrequent buses) and that this village is not a ‘tourist’ area despite having three very large campsite and caravan parks within a 3 mile radius. This report can be evaluated by most as ‘poppycock’. But on the basis of this report a large tick was awarded onto the application.
Many of us will identify with and know of similar stories. And the huge decline in British hedgerows highlights the reality that existing planning procedure is simply inadequate to prevent this from happening.
Unfortunately no matter what can be achieved by way of education and initiatives is simply a drop in the ocean against the brazen and legal destruction of our natural resources. Planning has to see more than a radical
new set of guidelines. It needs overhauling and it needs draconian measures in order to protect itself. It needs policing from several tiers in order to prevent development or agriculture from destroying their own interests and
industry by way of destroying the very environment they aim to utilise.
Innovation, qualified practitioners and financial valuation of our natural resources are ready and waiting to ensure that required development can be carried out without long term damage to our natural environment
and ecology and to utilise them legal directive must be enforced. Unfortunately someone somewhere has to also ensure that agriculture is sufficiently subsidised to allow for the correct conservation and maintenance of these resources also. That will cost a lot of money.
Comments
Hi,
My apologies for just cutting and pasting a blog I generated in 2009, but it was so relevant to this one I felt it worth including as is. I sometimes dispair at our political mindset that seems always to go too far in a certain direction. I have tried to initiate a hedgerow assessment and mapping exercise utilising largely volunteers (to reduce costs) to lukewarm response. Yet this could be a start to understanding the UK ecosystem - at least enough to make well considered planning decisions.
UK Planning System Failing in its Duty of Care to Our Countryside
Although this is particularly relevant to the UK, I am sure aspects of the article will strike a more global chord.
For all the Biodiversity Action Plans(BAP’s), EU Legislation, Planning Policy Guideline Publications etc……. our countryside is being rapidly degraded as a consequence of the increased uptake of greenfield sites for development purposes. These greenfield pockets are often considered to be of ‘no ecological value’ by technical officers with no ecological background, supported by Natural England officers with no local knowledge and not the manpower to gain this local information. To quote from an excellent article by Robert Gillespie and David Hill on Habitat Banking (Town & Country Planning. Habitat Banking – A new Look at Nature and Development Mitigation. Vol: 76. No. 4. Pp. 121-125. April 2007)
“For sites of subregional nature conservation importance this ‘balance’ often favours development, but the fabric of the countryside and the biodiversity resource can suffer dramatically through piecemeal fragmentation – through death by a thousand cuts. There is no mechanism for cumulative restoration of landscapes in association with such piecemeal development.”
If a landscape is poor and impoverished to start with, whether naturally or as a consequence of human activity, mitigation, within the planning system, is rarely used to improve the situation. In fact, the opposite occurs compounded by a central government planning appeal system with a remit to overturn local objections for the greater good (the building of more affordable – read here throw away – homes – designed for replacement in 50 years – a developers quote here not my own- a totally short term unsustainable approach to the UK’s housing needs).
To quote a regional planning office “ if we had to consider the protection of bats there would never be any development”
Why is there is no unified local authority databases cross referencing ecological findings from previous planning applications to aid in decision making with regards to future planning applications ( habitats and the species they nurture do not follow our maps). This omission fosters the piecemeal development of our countryside, as per the above quote, to the detriment of us all. ( except for those developers that have made enough money to buy themselves a bit of ‘natural england’)
To put all this in context (see:- D.A. Hill, M. Fasham, G. Tucker, M. Shewry andP. Shaw: The Handbook of Biodiversity Methods:Survey, Evaluation and Monitoring. Cambridge University Press, 2005: M.A. Eaton, M. Ausden, N. Burton, P.V. Grice, R.D. Hearn, C.M. Hewson, G.M. Hilton, D.G. Noble, N. Ratcliffe and M.M. Rehfisch: The State of the UK’s Birds 2005. Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, BTO, WWT, CCW, EN, EHS and SNH, 2006)Since the Second World War Britain has lost:-
50 per cent of its ancient lowland woodland,
150,000 miles of hedgerows,
95 per cent of traditional hay meadows,
80 per cent of chalk downland and
80 per cent of wetland fens and mires.
Five species of wildflower are lost per county every ten years;
five species of butterfly have become extinct since the 19th century;
500 species of invertebrate are classed as endangered;
most amphibian species are in decline;
eight of the 16 bat species in the UK are now endangered or rare;
since the 1970s some 50 per cent of song thrushes,
53 per cent of skylarks,
94 per cent of tree sparrows,
72 per cent of starlings and
89 per cent of corn buntings have been lost.
Alongside these declines, 42 per cent of the 1 million or so hectares of SSSIs (sites of special scientific interest) are considered to be in ‘unfavourable condition’, as are 69 per cent of rivers and streams, 65 per cent of upland grasslands and heaths, 35 per cent of fen, marsh and swamp, and 33 per cent of lowland broadleaved woodland.3
It is not all doom and gloom BAP’s are necessary and an important strategic tool in assessing and preserving our countryside.
Natural England are a developing organisation that could become a real force for preserving our natural heritage if they can maintain their independent integrity in spite of political pressure. However they are understaffed with little statutory power, and a tendency to use incomplete GIS databases (info mainly on SSSI’s, AONB’s, LNR’s etc… irrelevant to the potential local greenfield site earmarked for development) to advise local planning authorities.
Now as to the other players :-
The Environment Agency:- started off with no teeth in the 90’s, and I was sceptical as to how effective an organisation it could be. I was wrong. It, in partnership with DEFRA, has developed a powerful role with regards to the protection of our natural environment
However their staff profile has become top heavy with the young academically adept but practically inept. The consequence has been an accumulation of potentially poor decisions based on an increasing reliance on the use of mathematical models (cheap option) of questionable efficacy and reliability (the cost of which will not come to light until those that set it in motion have retired). Also the increasingly cosy relationship with DEFRA has compromised their independent integrity and put them in the same bed as the politicians.
Some Useful Links:-
Gillespie and Hills Article on Habitat Banking http://www.environmentbank.com/docs/TCPA_HBplusCov.pdf
BRE research into sustainability in the built environment
http://www.bre.co.uk/
NHBS Environmental Bookstore
http://www.nhbs.com/index.php
Environment Agency http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/
Natural England http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/
Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) http://www.defra.gov.uk
US Environment Protection Agency – A very user friendly informative site http://www.epa.gov/
NB
as an aside there is proposal to change the planning laws to more easily allow the construction of land based wind farms – conservation is not just about habitat preservation , but also our appreciation of it, lose its intrinsic beauty by covering it with turbines and we may cease to fight for its preservation.