Hart District Local Plan in Hart District, Hampshire, England
We have been sent a short movie showing flooding again on Station Road between Bagwell Lane and the Hurst on 9 March 2016. This is in addition to the floods we documented on 4 Jan and 7 January 2016.
Surely, it cannot be sensible to plan for a new town in a place that has flooded three times in less than three months.
FACE IT have been quoted in this week’s Fleet News & Mail, claiming that the “urban extension option may sound like a ‘brownfield’ solution but would actually mean an extra 2,173 homes being built on green fields in Fleet and Hook”.
It does appear that all of the efforts they have put into their campaign around the Hart Council’s Housing Option Consultation has exhausted them to such an extent that they now misunderstand the difference between types of development because nobody is arguing that urban extensions are somehow brownfield development in disguise.
They make spurious claims about school places, after making up their own estimate of how many extra school places might be required without doing a proper population projection. Note that Hampshire County Council have not put in place any plans beyond 2018, are forecasting a surplus of secondary school places at that time and a reduction in the birth rate as well as admitting that Hart schools are educating many children from outside the district.
They also make some claims about the scale of development that has occurred in Fleet, Church Crookham and Hook and about how many houses would end up being built around Fleet and Hook under each of the options Hart has put forward. It is not clear where they get their numbers from, because they don’t tally with the figures we put together.
However, nobody would dispute that Hook in particular has seen a big rise in housing in both absolute and relative terms. But what we find difficult to understand is why Hook’s Neighbourhood Planning team and Parish Council are advocating the new town option as their first choice which would deliver more than 1,800 houses in Hook Parish and effectively coalesce Hartley Wintney, Winchfield and Hook into a giant conurbation that might be named Hartley Winchook. This is more houses than the urban extension they oppose (730 houses), more than the dispersal option put forward by Hart Council (204 houses) and more than the brownfield solution put forward by We Heart Hart (only 57 new dwellings to be permitted).
FACE IT rightly say that the combination of Fleet, Church Crookham, Elvetham Heath and Ewshot (greater Fleet) has seen a lot of new housing in absolute terms over recent years. However, this is only part of the story as all parts of the district have seen significant development. When you look at the amount of new housing in proportion to size, the percentage increase for greater Fleet over the planning period of 2011-2031 is forecast to be around 17% for the dispersal and urban extension options and 14% with the new town option. This is below the average for the whole district at 21%, 18% and 18% respectively for each option and well below the percentage increases for places like Hartley Wintney which is forecast to see 34%, 39% and 21% increases for each of the options put forward by Hart.
The brownfield option that We Heart Hart has put forward has the potential to meet all of the remaining housing need and results in a more balanced distribution across the district in proportion to the size of existing settlements. Our solution would result in a 23% increase for the greater Fleet area, 22% for Hartley Wintney and 27% for the smaller parishes that include Winchfield.
The proposed densities in the brownfield option are not at all demanding, with an average density on the SHLAA sites of around 25 dwellings per hectare. The proposed densities on the vacant office blocks are no different to some developments that Hart has already permitted on Fleet Road, such as the new McCarthy and Stone development. Our proposals do not include Pyestock (aka Hartland Park), which could deliver even more houses on brownfield sites into the future if Hart Council is successful in reallocating that site for housing.
We do agree with FACE IT, that we need to take a strategic view of the future, but we disagree on what that strategic vision might be. In our view, continuing to concrete over green fields equivalent to 25 football pitches each year is not at all sustainable and our children and grandchildren would not thank us for doing that.
The advantages of a brownfield solution are:
Of course, the new town proposal that is in the consultation has been undergoing testing for over a year now, and has identified a number of significant barriers including education, transport and foul water drainage. The costs of the infrastructure required for a new town are astronomical and would never be met by developer contributions. If Hart were to choose the new town option, it runs the risk of not passing inspection because infrastructure delivery could not be guaranteed.
We hope that the new Strategic Housing Market Assessment, (SHMA) when it is eventually delivered in June will result in a lower housing target for Hart, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath. But until then, the threat of Hart having to build 3,000 for those districts is very real. Support for a new town will create capacity to build these extra houses which will mean we will end up with the worst of all worlds, a new town, urban extensions and dispersal across the district.
So, we urge all residents of Hart to reject a new town, reject urban extensions and get behind a brownfield solution and give Hart Council further encouragement to step up their efforts in this regard by responding to the consultation and putting support for a brownfield solution in the comments.
We have created a dedicated consultation page and updated our two guides to responding to the consultation that are available on the downloads below. The comments are designed to be cut and pasted into the boxes provided. It will be very powerful if you could edit the comments into your own words. Please do find time to respond to the consultation and play your part in saving our countryside.
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Hart Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee has produced its report in to the withdrawn Housing Options consultation. Their report can be found here.
They make a number of recommendations:
These recommendations, especially when coupled with the decision to ask East Hampshire council to host and manage the plan making process, look sensible.
The key passage in what went wrong and why is:
During an informal conversation a senior planning policy officer mentioned the call to the Joint Chief Executive, Daryl Phillips [DP]. DP stated that he did not see it as a major issue, that there was no need to do anything at the time but that it could be reported as a factor to take into consideration when interpreting the findings from the consultation.
A senior planning policy officer subsequently decided that the response form provided online should be amended to include Dogmersfield and Crookham Village. Other officers, in accordance with the senior planning officer’s instructions, updated a word version of the document and this was published on 6 th January. The form that was updated and published was an earlier draft version of the document and apart from that new wording including Dogmersfield and Crookham Village, contained a number of other differences to the previous published form.
It will be interesting to see the Staffing Committee’s view on the Council structure and whether they recommend a strengthening of the senior management team.
We are slightly disappointed that their report has not addressed some of the wider issues we raised in our submission to the process.
It is now more important than ever that we get a good Local Plan published by the end of the year, or there is a significant risk the Government will step in and do the Local Plan for us.
We urge everyone to respond to the new consultation, and and ask Hart to create a brownfield solution to meet the housing needs of the young and elderly in Hart. We have created a dedicated consultation page, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they are available on the downloads below. The comments are designed to be cut and pasted into the boxes provided. It will be very powerful if you could edit the comments into your own words. Please do find time to respond to the consultation and play your part in saving our countryside.
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2 Minute version:
It has emerged that Hart Council have no effective way of monitoring how many dwellings of different types that have been built or permitted as part of the Local Plan. They have admitted that essentially they are flying blind and do not know how many 1 & 2-bed properties have been built or permitted and similarly do not know how many specialist units for the elderly are in the pipeline. This is despite the fact that the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) is very clear on how many homes of different types have to be built as part of the overall 7,534 requirement.
We asked questions at Council about this on 28 January and received short shrift, with the chairman refusing to allow the question about 1 & 2-bed homes to be put, and the question about accommodation for the elderly was not answered. We followed up with FOI requests on both questions and have been told that the the information was available on Hart’s Planning portal. It transpires that what they mean by this is that they expect members of the public to wade through hundreds of planning applications and hundreds of building control records to manually collate and report on the data, and even then, not all of the data required to answer the questions is available.
At first, we thought this was just obfuscation on the part of the council, but subsequent discussions with officers has revealed that Hart Officers would have to do exactly the same work to get at the answers.
What is particularly astonishing is that none of the councillors appear to have any interest at all in this and appear to be content to allow the council to fly blind. We don’t think this approach will stand up to scrutiny by an inspector, because the SHMA is very clear on the different types of housing that needs to be built.
To re-cap, according to the current Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA), Hart needs to build 7,534 dwellings in the plan period running from 2011-2032.
The SHMA is also very clear on the sizes and types of housing that needs to be built, including the number of affordable homes for the young and specialist housing for the elderly.
Hart Surrey Heath and Rushmoor SHMA Figure 9.8
First, the quantity of houses that needs to be built by the number of bedrooms is covered in Figure 9.8, reproduced above. Working through the arithmetic reveals that we need to build around 3,800 1 & 2-bed dwellings, using Hart’s target of 40% affordable. Hart has built or permitted around 4,600 dwellings since 2011 and has no idea what the split is by number of bedrooms, and so has no idea how many more smaller, starter properties need to be built out of the remaining 2,934 to be permitted.
Hart Surrey Heath and Rushmoor SHMA Figure 10.15
Second, the number of specialist units for the elderly is covered in Figure 10.15. Between 2012 and 2030, Hart needs to provide 1,390 specialist units for the elderly and infirm. Extending this back to 2011, and out to 2032 at the 80 dwellings per annum rate identified in the report would give 1,650 units. To this must be added the further 940 registered care places in the graphic above. This gives a total of 2,590 additional units for the ageing population. Hart has built or permitted around 4,600 dwellings since 2011 and has no idea how many specialist units for the elderly are in that 4,600. Consequently, Hart has no idea how many more of these specialist units need to be built out of the remaining 2,934 to be permitted.
Surely we cannot continue to go on with basic management tools missing from the Local Plan process and seemingly none of the councillors being at all concerned.
We live in hope that soon the council will be able to provide data on what has been built since 2011, but there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to get at the data for what has been permitted for the future.
If you would like to ask Hart to get a grip on the situation, and create a brownfield solution to meet the housing needs of the young and elderly in Hart, we urge you to respond to the Hart District Council consultation about the Local Plan and ask them to think again. We have created a dedicated consultation page, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they are available on the downloads below. The comments are designed to be cut and pasted into the boxes provided. It will be very powerful if you could edit the comments into your own words. Please do find time to respond to the consultation and play your part in saving our countryside.
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Brownfield site: vacant offices at Ancells Farm Business Park, Fleet, Hart District, Hampshire.
In a very positive move, it has been announced that Hart District Council has joined a Government pilot to create a national register of brownfield sites. This means that Hart will be at the forefront of this initiative, which marks a significant improvement in the level of commitment towards brownfield development. Of course, this comes on the back of last week’s call for Pyestock (aka Hartland Park) to be released for housing.
Only last year, the leader of Hart Council ruled out the creation of a register of brownfield sites, so this move is very significant.
The other interesting development is that both deliverable and developable sites will be included in the new brownfield register. This is a big difference to the consultation currently going on where only deliverable brownfield sites are included, even though most of the green field sites offered for consultation are not even developable:
To be regarded as suitable for housing our proposed criteria are that sites must be:
Available. This means that sites should be either deliverable or developable. Sites that are deliverable should be available and offer a suitable location for development now and be achievable with a realistic prospect that housing will be delivered on the site within five years and in particular that development of the site is viable. To be considered developable, sites are likely to come forward later on (e.g. between six and ten years). They should be in a suitable location for housing development and there should be a reasonable prospect the site will be available and that it could be viably developed at the point envisaged.
It is envisaged that the first draft of the register will be produced by the end of June 2016.
We welcome this development and will report back on any further developments.
More details of the proposals can be found in the pilot scheme manual here, and in the Government proposals for changes to the planning system, here.
If you would like to give Hart Council more encouragement to create a brownfield solution to our housing needs, we urge you to respond to the Hart District Council consultation about the Local Plan and ask them to think again. We have created a dedicated consultation page, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they are available on the downloads below. The comments are designed to be cut and pasted into the boxes provided. It will be very powerful if you could edit the comments into your own words. Please do find time to respond to the consultation and play your part in saving our countryside.
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Winchfield
Hampshire Campaign to protect Rural England (CPRE) have published a new article on their website saying, “If a new town is the answer, then Hart is asking the wrong question”.
The article goes on to note that a new town at Winchfield will not deliver many homes during the plan period and so will be futile. The CPRE also notes that there is evidence that the housing market assessment maybe 30-50% too high, echoing our analysis of a number of SHMAs in the South of England.
They also note that a new town is likely to build the wrong type of housing in the wrong place to meet the needs of the district, saying “Those in need of a £200,000 property close to urban amenities, public transport and employment may not be in the market for a £300,000 property in a remote dormitory village”.
We wholeheartedly agree with CPRE’s sentiments.
If you would like to give Hart Council more encouragement to persist in getting Pyestock released and create a brownfield solution to our housing needs, we urge you to respond to the Hart District Council consultation about the Local Plan and ask them to think again. We have created a dedicated consultation page, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they are available on the downloads below. The comments are designed to be cut and pasted into the boxes provided. It will be very powerful if you could edit the comments into your own words. Please do find time to respond to the consultation and play your part in saving our countryside.
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Brownfield site: Hartland Park (Pyestock) near Fleet, Hart District, Hampshire could be released for housing.
Joint-CEO of Hart District Council, Daryl Phillips has called for Hartland Park (Pyestock) to be released for housing in an article in Fleet News and Mail. The article claims the site is on the market, and this appears to be confirmed by its presence on the Jones Lang Lasalle website here and here.
Hart Council believes that the 119-acre (48 Hectare) site could yield over 1,000 dwellings. That would equate to an undemanding density of around 20 dwellings per hectare. We think that opportunities for increasing density should be explored, taking account of the environmental sensitivity. Who knows, there might even be sufficient space for new schools if it were shown that a new secondary school was required. The old Bramshott Farm site across the road may well be earmarked as SANG.
The advantage of Pyestock as a site is that it is close to Fleet railway station and could be reached by bicycle or on foot and it is close to existing employment sites in Fleet and around Farnborough airport. The site is very close to the M3 and the road system has already been improved in anticipation of thousands of lorry movements.
If the owners could be persuaded to release this site for housing, then it is certain that we would have sufficient brownfield capacity to meet or housing needs up to 2031 and beyond, as it would take our capacity up to over 3,500, when our remaining need to be permitted is 2,500. We definitely would not need a new town, nor would we need an urban extension.
If you would like to give Hart Council more encouragement to persist in getting Pyestock released and create a brownfield solution to our housing needs, we urge you to respond to the Hart District Council consultation about the Local Plan and ask them to think again. We have created a dedicated consultation page, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they are available on the downloads below. The comments are designed to be cut and pasted into the boxes provided. It will be very powerful if you could edit the comments into your own words. Please do find time to respond to the consultation and play your part in saving our countryside.
Full version:
2 Minute version:
According to an email we have seen from Rushmoor Borough Council, it appears as though the new Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) for Hart, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath has been delayed again until June 2016.
Back in January, Rushmoor said that the new SHMA and Employment Land Review (ELR) would be published in May 2016. Around that time, Hart were saying “late-February” with perhaps some highlights a little earlier. Now, according to an email we have seen, dated today, the new SHMA and ELR have been pushed back until June, with publication of their draft submission Local Plan due in October or November 2016. An extract of the email is shown below:
| Key Milestones | Dates |
| Publication of updated SHMA | June 2016 |
| Publication of updated ELR | June 2016 |
| Publish draft submission Local Plan | October / November 2016 |
| Submission of Local Plan, Sustainability Appraisal (SA) Report and Proposals Map to Planning Inspectorate | February 2017 |
| Hearing sessions | May 2017 |
| Receipt of Inspector’s Report | October 2017 |
| Adoption and publication of Local Plan and Proposals Map | December 2017 |
Hart Council plans to publish a draft Local Plan (a plan in a similar state to the Local Plan Rushmoor sent out for consultation last Summer) in Summer 2016. We find it difficult to believe that they will be able to stick to this timetable if the new evidence base is not going to be published until June.
Hart is now at significant risk of the Government stepping in and doing the Local Plan for them, as Government minister Brandon Lewis has said that Local Authorities may have their Local Plans written for them if they are not in place by early 2017.
As regular readers will know, this is not the first time the timetable has slipped as we reported here and here.
James Farm Nursery Hartley Wintney
Hart Council has added a number of new sites to its SHLAA evidence base. There is a mix of brownfield and green field sites, as we explore below, but the overall impact is to increase the brownfield capacity to 2,493-2,535 units which is now enough to meet the remaining need of 2,500.
The sites are:
SHL25 Land attached to Brook House, Crondall, green field
SHL81 Vertu, Beacon Hill Road, Church Crookham, brownfield site, 65-70 units
SHL176 Hawley House, Hawley, in Blackwater and Hawley Parish, brownfield site, WHH estimate 8-10 units
SHL177 Land at Croft Lane, Hartley Wintney, green field site, WHH estimate
SHL178 Broden Stables & Stable Yard, Crondall, brownfield site 14-27 units
SHL179 Bowenhurst Lane, Crondall, brownfield site, 30-35 units
SHL180 Crondall Bee Farm, green field site
SHL181 Land south of Little Rye Farm, greenfield site
SHL189 Land at James Farm, Hartley Wintney, brownfield site, 8 units
We have been through each document and some have not yet been fully assessed by Hart’s Planners, so we have had to estimate the size of sites SHL176 and SHL177 using Google Maps and the capacity. Hart Council have not estimated the size of SHL180 either, but that site looks so remote and so close to Basingstoke Canal, that we feel it unlikely ever to be permitted so we have not bothered to estimate a size or capacity for it.
The total capacity of these new brownfield sites is 125-150 units, bringing our total estimate of brownfield capacity up to 2,493-2,535 units.
We have updated our table of brownfield sites and our brownfield thermometer accordingly.
If you would like to ask Hart to abandon the new town and urban extension ideas and create a brownfield solution to our housing needs, we urge you to respond to the Hart District Council consultation about the Local Plan and ask them to think again. We have created a dedicated consultation page, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they are available on the downloads below. The comments are designed to be cut and pasted into the boxes provided. It will be very powerful if you could edit the comments into your own words. Please do find time to respond to the consultation and play your part in saving our countryside.
Full version:
2 Minute version:
Which would you rather preserve – derelict eyesore or our countryside and wildlife?
Hook Action Against Over Development have written an article on their website which has been shared on Facebook, criticising both our support of a brownfield solution to our housing needs and the statement from the CPRE saying that the Winchfield New Town proposal was the worst site and the worst option for development.
We re-produce their article below, together with our responses in blue:
There has been a lot of talk about brownfield development and some claims that a new settlement is not necessary because brownfield housing development can provide for all of Hart’s housing needs. Brownfield housing development is the reuse of property or land for residential use where it was previously used for something else, for example office space, industrial land, military use or farm buildings.
Yes, we do believe that all of Hart’s remaining housing need can be met from brownfield sites, and we have set out the case and our plan here and here. This draws on sites in the SHLAA at only ~26 dwellings per hectare (dph) and the work of the Stonegate Report, plus we have added the civic area that Fleet Future recommended for redevelopment and Fleet Town Council have raised their council tax to fund the costs of preparing a redevelopment plan.
One group in particular from outside of Hook is putting forward the suggestion that the Hart consultation is a simple choice between brownfield and greenfield development. But no matter how much they repeat it does not make it any more true. The CPRE, an organisation with laudable aims, appears to have now fallen for this fiction and hijacking of the term “sustainable development”.
We believe they are referring to We Heart Hart. We believe the CPRE have not put forward an actual plan, but have clearly stated that they think that a new town at Winchfield is the worst site and worst option for development in Hart. Sustainable development was defined by the Sustainable Development Commission as:
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
The concept of sustainable development can be interpreted in many different ways, but at its core is an approach to development that looks to balance different, and often competing, needs against an awareness of the environmental, social and economic limitations we face as a society.
We believe that sustainable development does not include concreting over the equivalent of 25 football pitches per year of green fields and leaving untouched, vacant, decaying office blocks. A new settlement would compromise future generations by needlessly concreting over hundreds of hectares of green fields, depriving future generations of the health benefits of the countryside. The economics of the proposals don’t stack up, requiring ~£350m of infrastructure spending, money that neither Hart nor Hampshire County Council have, especially now that HCC is facing an £81m per annum funding deficit.
Hart’s housing strategy is brownfield first, but Hart cannot propose development on sites that are in commercial use or that have not been put forward for housing. If they were to do so then the Local Plan would fail inspection again at the first hurdle and this would be a disaster. Even hypothetically utilising these unavailable brownfield sites would demand construction at inner city density in order to meet Hart’s objectively assessed housing need. We cannot believe that CPRE are promoting building at such a density in Hart. That would not be sustainable.
We agree that sites need to be developable and eventually deliverable and nobody wants to see the Local Plan fail. Back in September, Hart Council said that they thought the brownfield capacity was 1,800 units. Miraculously, this has fallen by 75% to only 450 units in the consultation. However, as described above, most of the sites we have put forward are in the SHLAA and in no worse state of deliverability than those put forward for consultation. The other sites are in the Stonegate report and we understand Stonegate are working hard to secure these sites. The average density for the SHLAA sites is less than Hart’s planning rule of thumb at 26dph, and the Stonegate sites are at no higher density than developments that Hart has granted permission for such as the McCarthy & Stone’s recent development on Fleet Road which many people think is an attractive building.
Hart are actually consulting on which of Hart’s green fields should be selected for housing in the event that there is insufficient brownfield land to meet the housing need. Given the vast expansion of the existing towns and villages in Hart already, with Hook alone having a 25% expansion approved for this Local Plan period, the only suitable and truly sustainable option is a new settlement to allow for a planned increase in infrastructure. Just expanding existing towns and villages either piecemeal or with “urban extensions” is still building on green fields, but in a way that will not provide the opportunity to build extra schools, roads and health facilities that the thousands of new Hart residents will require. That would not be sustainable.
The proposed new town will in fact deliver over 1,800 houses in Hook Parish, which is more than the proposed urban extension and more than the undeveloped brownfield sites. To be clear, we do not support urban extensions either because we believe all of the remaining need can be met on brownfield sites. The infrastructure costs for a new town do not stack up and a new town will do nothing to close the large £12.2m existing infrastructure funding gap in Hook, and £20.7m gap in Fleet and Church Crookham. No evidence has been presented that we need a new secondary school and the funding for a new town will not address existing road bottlenecks, nor will there be sufficient funding to address the roads requirements of a new town. We repeat, we do not believe concreting over 25 football pitches each year is at all sustainable.
Elimination of all potential commercial property space in Hart is in fact extremely short-sighted. Even the Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership which is urging more housing would not want to see commercial space becoming rare and expensive. There is already an acknowledged shortage within Hart of small business units and light industrial space. Larger available office space provides options for small local businesses to grow without leaving the area. A thriving local economy needs a balance of housing and business to provide employment opportunities locally and avoid all of these new residents having to take to the roads and railways to commute out of the area for work on already busy transport links. That would not be sustainable.
Nobody is saying that all of the vacant commercial space be handed over to housing. But even the Employment Land Review, based as it is on the inflated Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) and the inflated jobs forecasts, suggests that there will be around 600,000 sq m of vacant employment space across the Housing Market Area at the end of the plan period and Rushmoor was planning to “protect” 96 Ha of vacant brownfield sites that simply are not needed. If there was such a shortage of offices or of light industrial space, places like the Murrell Green Estate would not have the big vacancies they currently have. Of course it would be more sustainable to free up some of these spaces and redevelop them for residential use rather than leave them to rot and decay.
There is very little brownfield land in Hart but there is an amusing “brownfield site slideshow”, made available by campaigners whose aim is to push development away from their village, to supposedly “demonstrate” how much brownfield land is available for housing. If you happen to see it, do bear in mind that:
Now perhaps the future really is an office building with some adjacent floorspace being residential, but can anyone imagine this being attractive to either residential or commercial tenants?!
The fact that some of the sites have already been taken up for redevelopment simply proves our case and shows it can be done. Our brownfield solution has taken account of the sites that are already underway. Work at Hartland Park (aka Pyestock) stopped years ago, and there is no sign of it re-starting. The owners will not wish to keep an expensive site forever generating no returns. Of course if M&S moves into another Fleet Road site, then they will leave behind a different vacant block to go with the many other vacant units in the Hart Centre.
There are plenty of examples of mixed residential and commercial use, both in this country and on the continent. Nobody is suggesting this should happen without comprehensive redevelopment.
This current consultation is clearly not about a choice between brownfield and greenfield development, it is about the best way to provide Hart’s required housing with essential supporting infrastructure and only a new settlement can achieve that. For more, please refer to our previous article hookdevaction.org.uk/hart-housing-consultation-restarted-your-action-needed.
The Hartley Winchook new town is not required, it not viable because of the flood risks and the massive, unfunded infrastructure costs, and will not be sustainable in any sense of the word. There is a brownfield alternative, and we should seize that opportunity.
Here are the slideshows of vacant brownfield sites we have found in Hart and Rushmoor:
If you would like to ask Hart to abandon the new town and urban extension ideas and create a brownfield solution to our housing needs, we urge you to respond to the Hart District Council consultation about the Local Plan and ask them to think again. We have created a dedicated consultation page, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they are available on the downloads below. The comments are designed to be cut and pasted into the boxes provided. It will be very powerful if you could edit the comments into your own words. Please do find time to respond to the consultation and play your part in saving our countryside.
Full version:
2 Minute version:
