The Campaign for Rural Englands response to the "Assault"
reads:
The Campaign to Protect Rural England said green belts,
established 50 years ago to stop urban sprawl, were more necessary than
ever.CPRE policy director Neil Sinden said: "In the face of
increasing development pressures, we do not need to re-examine green belt
principles, in the manner Natural England suggests."On the contrary, we
need to reaffirm them.
"England has 660,000 empty homes and enough
brownfield land known to be available now capable of accommodating more than
a million homes. Around 9% of commercial properties are vacant.
"Brownfield land will not 'run out', since some
buildings will always need to be replaced and there will always be areas
needing redevelopment."Land is a scarce resource."It makes sense
to recycle and reuse land and buildings before developing
greenfields"It doesn't make sense to squander greenfields while urban
areas lie starved of the redevelopment and regeneration they desperately
need."
He said the danger was that green belt land would be
considered for development as a matter of course before alternative options
were looked at. He continued: "The most important thing about green
belts is their openness and permanence, not their attractiveness in
landscape terms."Where Green Belt has become scruffy and degraded the
solution is to enhance it through better land management not build over
it."