Drastic changes to UK planning

[Mike Birkin]

Forwarded from Mike at SW Friends of the Earth & scary stuff indeed.
I recently attempted to interview people from the SW Regional Assembly about changes to planning without success. This is 100% 
top down from Europe and the ODPM. And the media are unable to explain to the public what's going on except through a bland 
'position statement'.
Tony


Dear all

I attended a press launch this morning for the consultation into:

1) the spatial strategy for the West of England (i.e. the old Avon area)

2) the Greater Bristol Strategic Transport Strategy

I have to say it was pretty scary stuff. The strategies cover the next 20 years, and envisage a minimum of 190,000 new homes in 
that period - that's
more than there are at present in the whole of North Somerset. The maximum could be 50% yet more than that. The main engine of 
this growth is the
economy - apparently we have the second highest GDP per head in England and this is a good thing and we want more of it - it's 
good for the UK. As
well as all the new houses we will of course have to have lots of new roads to move everyone around. The main purpose of the 
strategy is apparently so
the WOE can get in its bid to government for the money for all the new infrastructure (i.e. roads) that will be required. Especially for 
reaching the
airport. There was a passing reference here to trains and buses.

OK so I  parody the attitudes somewhat, but only a bit I assure you. Perhaps the scariest thing was that the environmental impact of 
all this was not
mentioned. Not once.

The WOE consultation document claims - point 9 under "quality of life" - that our economy will become carbon neutral in this period. 
I am not sure
that the authors of this document have a clue what that means (I am not sure that I do, come to that) but I think that what it reveals 
is that they
are in deep denial about environmental constraints, resource use, climate change, etc.

You can look at the documents on these sites:

http://www.gbsts.com/Reports/leaflet2.pdf

http://www.westofengland.org/downloads/Thevision.pdf

Comparing the GBSTS Theme 3 map (road corridors) with the WOE Map B (Green Belt) is particularly instructive!

At last night's meeting of Friends of the Earth groups in the area (WOEFOE?) we resolved that a group of us would meet soon to 
work on responses to
all this. We'll let you know as soon as we have further news.

But for now I'm off to Green Drinks - I need it...!

cheers

Mike



--

--
Mike Birkin
Regional Campaigns Coordinator (SW)
Friends of the Earth
10-12 Picton Street
BRISTOL  BS6 5QA
Tel. 0117 9420128 Fax 0117 9420164 Mobile 0778 7722987

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Tony Blair says climate change is the worlds greatest environmental challenge - yet the Government has sanctioned massive
growth in air travel that
will make it impossible to meet our carbon dioxide reduction targets.

Make your personal stand against airport expansion - sign the airport pledge

http://www.airportpledge.org.uk

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