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Speaker: Simon Fairlie Presentation: Rural Planning Issues Website: Chapter 7 Introduction Chapter 7 deals with planning problems in the countryside, especially in relation to caravans, buses, alternative structures based in the countryside. “How many people plan to live in the countryside in the future? [several hands raised]…Oh, quite a lot!” The problem in the countryside is one of planning, not the price of land. The Planning Issue One can buy a plot of land at £2,000 per acre and a wood kit house for £20,000/ caravan for £200. Then why is there an affordability problem? Rural planning: mired by gentrification, and the scarcity of building land with planning permission. Permission is only granted on the edge of villages and small towns, in order to protect the countryside. That small amount of building land is monopolised. 10 companies own ½ of countryside building land, the other ½ is owned by large local companies. Developers approach a farmer who is situated on a prospective building site; they arrange a price for the land should it be given planning permission; the developers then do a “deal” with the council for permission and 3 years later they get planning permission to build 800 houses on the site. There is no option to build your own house; the land is too expensive, in short supply and planning permission is restrictive. The countryside is bought up by those that can afford it; low income groups, key workers and local people are squeezed out into the towns and are replaced by “expats” from the city. These displaced people resort to caravans, huts on the land, and other forms of illegal tenure. Gypsies: the problem used to be possession orders on the land that gypsies were settled on; now gypsies own their own land but don’t have planning permission to build or live on it. There are currently 10,000 people living in caravans in the countryside. This problem will increase as more people want to move to the countryside, less land is available, which will eventually lead to more direct action by those displaced. Planning Permission Guidance 7 New planning guidance for sustainable housing in the countryside; this new legislation will affect the affordability of land. This would allow sustainable/ benign building to be allowed in areas not given planning permission. This would lead to a 2 tier system in the countryside. On the first would be the status qou of planning land, where land values and property prices would remain the same. The second tier allows and promotes super-sustainable/ low energy/ car free developments; developers willing to build in this way (under stringent criteria) would be able to acquire land at agricultural prices and plough the surplus into sustainable building development/ affordability. New version of PPG 7 has a clause which allows Country Houses to be built in exceptional circumstances, where they have followed “outstanding standards of contemporary architecture”. Although Beverly Hughes had said that it would be left out of the final draft, RIBA and the architectural lobby mounted a campaign to keep it in, which succeeded. The clause is highly subjective, exclusive, and inaccessible to lower incomes. This new clause will be used by anyone trying to build in the countryside, which will block up the system with appeals when they are rejected, and then onto courts. Sustainable development in the countryside is happening more in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, than in England. Question: “How can we, the general public, help?” Answer: Subscribe to Chapter 7 magazine; many ways to help are described in there. Direct action such as squatting alternative structures to be demolished (i.e. the Roundhouse in Wales).	AUDIO 1 AUDIO 2
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