CPRE Surrey Branch Chairman Tim Murphy writes to Bob Neill MP:
“Planning needs to ‘hold the ring’ between economic, social and environmental considerations. You are, presumably, aware of the history of planning in the UK which has given us a system of regulation that is widely admired around the world. Planning is not, and should never be, designed to simply advance a development agenda. It isn’t planning controls that have caused our current economic problems but bankers and, indeed, the lack of regulation in the financial sector.”

Countryside campaigners have been dealt a double blow after it emerged that one in three Green Belt planning applications is approved. Mole Valley District Council (MVDC) approved 329 out of 979 applications in the Green Belt in 2010/11, similar to the previous year, when 391 out of 926 were permitted. The figures, obtained by the Leatherhead Advertiser after a request made under the Freedom of Information Act, come weeks after the Government announced a “simplification” of planning rules, which conservation groups claim will allow widespread building on the Green Belt.

Fly-tipping and littering is ruining our countryside and harming the wildlife. Surrey is blessed with some of the best countryside the country has to offer but it is being blighted by rubbish dumped in hedgerows, lanes and fields. Action needs to be taken now to stop the countryside becoming a rubbish dump.

The Surrey Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England has hit back at Tory Minister Bob Neill after he branded CPRE a left-wing front. Branch Director Andy Smith said that the Minister was “very wide of the mark indeed” when he accused CPRE and the National Trust of being motivated by a left-wing political agenda.