The Campaign to Protect Rural England has angrily denied its attack on the Draft National Planning Framework was politically motivated and urged the Government to reconsider plans to scrap brownfield policy and to impose a presumption in favour of development, as a matter of urgency.
Responding to planning minister Bob Neill's claims that CPRE and National Trust opposition to the Framework are a "carefully choreographed smear campaign by left-wingers based within the national headquarters of pressure groups", CPRE chief executive Shaun Spiers pointed out his organisation is politically impartial and often seen as the epitome of middle England.
"‘CPRE shares the Government's aspirations for a more localised and less complex planning system," he said.
"But it has got its proposals badly wrong. They will not result in economic growth, just more countryside erosion and less say for local communities, in towns and cities as well as in the countryside. Ministers are making a bad mistake in putting economic interests before people or the environment. The Government should think again, particularly about its proposed presumption in favour of development and its proposal to repeal guidance on using brownfield land in preference to developing in open countryside. CPRE is not smearing the Government and I hope that the Government will stop smearing us."
