Countryside campaign attacks planning change

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said that before the last election both the Conservatives and Lib Dems promised to rebalance the system by giving communities the same right to appeal a planning decision as developers.

But according to the campaigners, under the draft national planning policy framework which aims to slim down more than a thousand pages of planning rules to just 52, communities will only have the power to approve development, not object.

As a result, big developers such as supermarket chains will still be able to bully communities into accepting building they do not want, the CPRE said.

Under the new rules, local plans should be drawn up for each area to ensure sustainable development and meet housing, business, retail, infrastructure and environmental needs.

However, neighbourhoods will also have the power to draw up their own plans. These neighbourhood plans will take precedence over local plans and will give local communities the right to grant planning permission for developments.

But they must match wider objectives, which the Government has spelled out is a presumption in favour of sustainable development, to boost growth.