Concreting over the countryside when houses stand empty
17 12 08 - 14:51 Add to which we have the scandal of more than 750,000 empty homes in England and 78,000 in Scotland. While homeless families fester on local authority lists, hundreds of streets are pock-marked by deserted properties. According to David Ireland of the Empty Homes Agency: "There are now enough vacant homes in England to house almost two million people, yet far more attention is paid to building new ones."But for reasons that are unclear, the government remains in thrall to the construction industry group-think belief that only by dismantling our planning safeguards can we promote affordability. When Gordon Brown took over as prime minister he told MPs that the government would "continue robustly to protect the land designated as green belt". But last month's publication of the Regional Spatial Strategies for England stands at variance with such ambition.
However, it is the east of England and the south-west that are likely to turn a shade of grey. The Hertfordshire lanes and fields around Stevenage - the setting for EM Forster's Howard's End, with its wistful idea of a deep, undisturbed England - are primed for executive estates, roundabouts and strip malls stretching towards St Albans, which itself is destined to sprawl towards the M1.
Along the south coast, the Dorset heathlands are to be abandoned to allow Bournemouth to join Poole. And the cities of Bath and Bristol are to combine into one conurbation as the greenbelt between them is deleted.
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Why? All the wars our ancestors fought and won are made pointless by acts like this.
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