Hands Off Our Land: Letters to the Editor

For the past 20 years, there has been a cross-party ambition to invest in our urban assets. The intensification of cities through the use of brownfield (derelict) land first and the retrofitting of existing buildings have led to a renaissance of cities such as Manchester, Liverpool and London. However, the economic downturn has slowed and in some cases reversed progress – a reminder that any urban renaissance is fragile.

There is no shortage of brownfield sites – England has 66,000 hectares which could be used for building – and while there is a need for more well-designed dwellings, there are 750,000 homes lying empty and 22 million homes which should be retrofitted. Some 330,000 dwellings have planning permission but have not been built.

The National Planning Policy Framework must make explicit its commitment to urban renaissance and to compact, retrofitted cities which provide the only form of sustainable development. This is the only way to protect our cities from falling into dereliction and the countryside from being eroded.

Lord Rogers of Riverside

Heidi Alexander MP

Lord Bichard

Lord Deben

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting

Andrew George MP

Lord Hart of Chilton

Lord Howarth of Newport

Tristram Hunt MP

Lord King of Bridgwater

Lord Marlesford

Lord Palmer

Lord Prescott

Lord Puttnam

Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank

Joan Ruddock MP

Graham Stringer MP

Baroness Whitaker

Hands Off Our Land letters from December 5

SIR – The word sustainable is used over and over again by ministers and by local government. It is the current buzzword.

Recently, I asked a director of a development company, which is in the process of burying a local barley field under bricks and concrete, what he understood it to mean and he replied that it meant using materials on the site that are sustainable.

My dictionary says “capable of being sustained” and under “sustain” it gives five definitions. I do not think any of them correspond to how the word is used in the draft National Planning Policy Framework.

I hope that now the consultation is over we shall soon be told what happens next. Politicians give conflicting messages about whether the NPPF will come into effect immediately or whether it will take two years. I hope the latter is correct.

Doug Pennifold
Burgess Hill, West Sussex

Hands Off Our Land letters from November 1

SIR – Between the Sixties and the Nineties, much public money was used providing infrastructure for the new town of Telford, Shropshire, sufficient to serve a planned population of over 200,000. The population today is about 165,000 across the borough of Telford and Wrekin, which now includes Newport and Wellington, rural areas and Ironbridge Gorge, a World Heritage site.

Telford and Wrekin council now plans the expansion of the small town of Newport, less than four miles from existing infrastructure at Telford, but for which no infrastructure yet exists. The development will include a superstore and housing – on green fields surrounding the old town.

The Government advocates sustainable development, but in this area, the existing infrastructure is under-utilised, while the public will have to fund new infrastructure for the development, which will kill off the independent retailers in Newport.

Maximum benefit should be derived from existing infrastructure before new investment thresholds are crossed.

David Parker
Newport, Shropshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 25

SIR – The valiant words of Hank Dittmar of the Prince’s Foundation (Comment, October 17), that planning should “reflect local character” are falling on deaf ears. When developers make huge offerings to cash-strapped councils, as part of the planning process, their interests will outweigh those of residents.

In our campaign to keep down the tower blocks at Chelsea Barracks that will loom 100 feet over the streets, we saw Westminster council give permission in contradiction of its own planning brief. The Qatari developers paid it £72 million cash as part of the deal.

We have appealed to the Secretary of State, but with the Qataris investing in the Olympics and London it seems futile. Taxpayers urgently need an organisation to control insatiable developers and councils.

Georgine Thorburn
Chairman, Chelsea Barracks Action Group
London SW1

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 22

SIR – Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, recently vowed to maintain the protection of the national parks from changes in the planning laws. There are no signs of such protection in the Lake District national park.

There, the planning authority has announced the building of 900 “affordable houses”, mainly on land which has been reclassified from greenfield to “suitable for housing and/or industry”.

Keswick, a small town of 5,000, has been allocated 156 affordable houses, sited on what was previously green belt. Alternative sites in the town were ignored as “too small to be viable”. The need for such large-scale development is debatable. The town’s leading employer, the Derwent Cumberland Pencil Company, has relocated to west Cumbria.

This kind of peripheral development in an area of outstanding beauty would disfigure the landscape and might harm tourism.

Peter Hadkins
Keswick, Cumberland

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 19

SIR – Hank Dittmar, chief executive of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, thinks the proposals for planning reform need changes to ensure developments are “nice places” (Comment, October 17). But there is more to a development being “nice” than avoiding buildings that look like carbuncles.

Many of us who have driven along the M4 between London and Heathrow will have taken pleasure from the roadside lakes with their stock of wildfowl. Those lakes are the well-landscaped residue of gravel quarrying.

Some valuable building products are only available in the wilder countryside and have to be mined from greenfield sites. But, with thought, most sites, after extraction, could be made as attractive as the M4 lakes. Awareness of this would ease concern about rural despoliation.

Bruce Denness
Whitwell, Isle of Wight

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 17

SIR – Even with the current planning regulations there is despoliation of the countryside. Recently I stood in the beautiful Arley arboretum and looked out over the Severn valley. On the far side of the Severn I could see the beginnings of a development – the curse of the urban, horsey culture invading the countryside – giving rise to the eyesores of shacks and the clutter of vans, caravans, horse boxes and white-tape electric fences keeping horses and ponies in weed-infested paddocks.

I don’t know if the Severn valley near Bewdley is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. However, I doubt if the relevant planning authority can do anything to prevent these ugly encampments which have recently cropped up all over the West Midlands under the present legislation. So what will it be like when the National Planning Policy Framework takes effect?

M. J. Scott-Bolton
Enville, Staffordshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 15

SIR – At a time when the Government has done nothing to improve mortgage availability, little to assist first-time buyers to raise the necessary deposits for a mortgage and nothing to improve affordability of homes by reforming stamp duty costs and the interest charges levied by mortgage providers, it seems to me that it has addressed the wrong problem.

The real task is making homes easier to buy, which has not been addressed, rather than easier to build, which has. From their public pronouncements, all the British homebuilders appear to be focused on increasing their selling prices and improving their margins rather than increasing volumes of homes sold.

By reforming the planning laws to make it easier to develop land but doing nothing to make homes easier for home-buyers to buy, it appears that the Government has addressed a long-standing grievance of the home-builders, rather than made a serious attempt to promote economic growth in an important sector of the economy where such initiatives are sorely needed.

Christopher Rickard
Ampfield, Hampshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 14

SIR – As Mary Sutherland rightly says (Letters, October 11), developers often build differently from the original approved plans, and councils fail to act.

One method developers may use is to obtain subsequent permission for changes from planning officers, through the powers delegated to planning officers by councils. The changed plans are not usually made public before approval is granted.

So communities which may have had no objections to the original plans are faced with substantially different developments, to which they would have objected had the final plans been public. This back-door approach makes a mockery of a planning system supposedly based on consultation and scrutiny by elected representatives.

Sandy Cox
Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 13

SIR – Congratulations on your campaign against the draft National Planning Policy Framework. It is a developers' charter, and to load the dice in favour of development is unfair and undemocratic.

Local opponents do not have the money or resources to stand up to big developers, whose main interest is, of course, in making money. There is nothing wrong with that; but because that is their goal, proper regulation needs to be in place.

We have seen the drastic consequences of deregulation of the banking system. Left to its own devices, the free market considers no other factors than its own self-interest, which is why regulation is needed in the interest of us all. Freeing up bureaucracy is not always a good thing.

Geoff Collard
Bristol

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 12

SIR – I am not convinced by the reassurances of Bob Neill, the Local Government Minister (Letters, October 7). Near here, a power company has applied for planning permission to build a “waste wood” incinerator on an area of prime agricultural land. This site is a Source Protection Zone Grade 1 – a designation for the aquifer underneath which has been described as “a water resource of national importance”. It is also adjacent to a Site of Special Scientific Interest and the adjoining land supports 93 bird species, 17 of which are threatened.

Electricity consumers are paying more than £1 billion in subsidies for “green energy” schemes such as this, via a levy on energy bills. Taking our money is one thing, but destroying the countryside as well is a step too far.

Melinda Raker
Thetford, Norfolk

SIR – Paragraph 14 of the National Planning Policy Framework says the presumption in favour of sustainable development should be seen as the “golden thread” running through both plan making and decision taking.

“Tape worm” is the proper appellation.

Dr Andrew Jones
Halesworth, Suffolk

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 11

SIR – When developers appeal against a decision made locally they know that the cost of challenging them often ensures their victory.

A simple remedy would be to make them pay the legal costs regardless of the outcome.

Bob Cole
Newton Tony, Wiltshire

SIR – I fear it is a little naive to expect David Cameron to halt the destruction of the British countryside that his party's financial backers are demanding.

Massed turbines and electricity pylons, bulldozed hillsides and building sprawl sufficient to absorb uncontrolled mass immigration – all are on their way.

Mr Cameron's recent impassioned speech in support of the EU may suggest that, within a few years, he expects to spend more time contemplating the Brussels cityscape than the wooded hills and winding trackways of rural England.

Nikolai Tolstoy
Southmoor, Berkshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 8

SIR – Mr Gove calls those opposing draft changes in the planning laws, “nimbies”. Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, used the same word for those opposing the HS2 rail scheme. Both projects are severely flawed. The Government says these projects will stimulate growth, but it cannot summon cogent arguments in support of either. So it relies on name-calling.

It is not, as Mr Gove says, a question of gardens over jobs. It is about opposing poor plans which will waste money, which will not bring economic growth but which will damage this country’s legacy.

David Kirchheimer
Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 7

SIR – Here, in the overcrowded South East, our action group has been fighting a proposal to build 600 houses on land which is not only green belt but is also classified as grade one and grade two agricultural land.

It is vital in any reform of national policy that such land should enjoy special protection. We import 40 per cent of our food and with a growing population this figure is likely to climb unless we increase our food production.

David Cameron stated on taking office that one of the Government’s tasks was to rebuild trust in our political system. He said he wanted to make sure that people were in control and that the politicians were their servants, not their masters.

Many people feel betrayed by the Government’s proposals and the manner in which they are being introduced. It is time for the Prime Minister to act on his rhetoric.

Alison Henwood

Rochford, Essex

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 6

SIR – George Osborne, the Chancellor, said at the Conservative Party conference that he would "fulfil that solemn promise to the next generation: we will leave the world a better place than we found it".

Building all over the country as a quick-fix solution to jump-starting the economy, to its long-term ruin, is as irresponsible as any of Gordon Brown's spend-now-and-who-cares-about-the-future policies.

Caroline Brocklehurst

Towcester, Northamptonshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 5

SIR – Ministers in favour of sustainable development have often repeated the assertion that extensive house-building during the inter-war period saved Britain from the worst effects of the Depression. Ministers must believe that if a tendentious historical assertion is repeated often enough, people will believe it to be true.

The inter-war housing "boom" had, at best, a marginal impact upon unemployment, which was concentrated geographically and in certain trades – textiles, ship-building. Nor was the housing boom sustained, and the environmental damage caused a reaction that led to the Abercrombie Plan of 1944 and the Town and Country Planning Act 1947.

It would be more credible for ministers to suggest that the revival of Britain's economic fortunes after 1931-2 was attributable chiefly to: the devaluation of sterling, the expansion of new industries, especially in electrical and synthetic goods; rearmament, at a later stage in the recovery; and, very debatably, the imposition of moderate tariffs.

The British banking sector was formidably solvent and stable throughout that period, and was able to facilitate high levels of investment in productive capacity within favoured sectors. This helped to sustain the war effort, not housing.

The absence of a house price bubble was due to the strict rationing of credit to households and the existence of a tax on the notional rental income of residences, as much as any increase in supply. Not all of these factors subsist today.

Ministerial claims should be treated with scepticism. It is as if the Government had subscribed to the principle enshrined in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend".

James Drever

Crockham Hill, Kent

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 4

SIR – Rather than allow the building of housing estates in rural areas, where there would be no employment anyway so no demand for them, would it not be better to revive a scheme like the one the Greater London Council ran in the Eighties?

The council made available mortgages at fair interest rates for the purchase of properties in need of refurbishment. The first two years of mortgage payments were waived, but the buyers of the properties undertook in that time to renovate them.

This would help people on to the property ladder, improve housing stock, regenerate neglected areas, and help the economy by generating demand for building services and materials.

Ingrid Cornish
Gainsborough, Lincolnshire

SIR – I started working for the Conservative Party in 1952, but now, with regret, I have cancelled my membership of our Conservative Patrons’ Club in protest at proposed changes to planning laws.

The Government is hearing the wide-ranging arguments against their proposals – but not heeding them.

Jonathan Baldwin
Nantwich, Cheshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 3

SIR – Greg Clark, the planning minister, in his introduction to the draft National Planning Policy Framework, says that planning is a creative exercise to improve the places in which we live. This statement is welcome, but the NPPF fails to promote and protect facilities, spaces and initiatives which enable culture and the arts to take place.

As senior representatives of national arts bodies, with networks and members whose activities and audiences are directly affected by the planning system, we are concerned about the omission of policies that would explicitly promote and protect cultural activities.

Our theatres, concert halls, art galleries, museums, libraries, public art initiatives, craft venues and artists’ studios matter. They help promote economic growth, enhance the built environment and develop sustainable communities. They are also hubs around which our world-leading creative industries have sprung up and flourished.

But the NPPF is currently silent on culture and, as a result, we are at risk of losing important cultural facilities and activities that can and do make a significant contribution to our civic pride, wellbeing and quality of life. We need a planning framework that promotes culture, not one that ignores it.

Rob Dickins
Chairman, The Theatres Trust
Mhora Samuel
Director, The Theatres Trust

and eighteen other signatories

Hands Off Our Land letters from October 1

SIR – The awful results of the draft National Planning Policy Framework are already being seen. Because ministers have allowed it to be “given weight” in current decision-making, green-field housing is being allowed, contrary to established plans.

The only way to prevent further damage is to withdraw the draft formally, not to keep it in place and “consult” on its details.

The Conservative government in the Eighties handled a similar situation better. Its 1983 draft Land for Housing circular was similar to the current draft NPPF in its pro-development tone and origins in the building industry. Public and parliamentary reaction was effective and the circular was withdrawn after three months.

It was replaced in June 1984 with policies that instead strengthened the role of the green belt. This change of policy was the start of improvement to the planning system which continued until 1997.

John Major’s government left us the best planning system that England has ever had, and a return to it would be widely welcomed.

Mark Sullivan
Planning adviser, Campaign to Protect Rural England
West Midlands Regional Group
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire

Hands Off Our Land latters from September 30

SIR – Local councils have found a simple way of preventing residents’ opinions from being considered in applications for retail developments. They appoint “independent experts”, such as retail consultancies, to make an assessment of a planning application. With a limited number to choose from, it is possible that the experts will include among their clients the developers making the application.

And if the experts predict, say, that a 10 per cent loss to local retailers and hundreds of extra cars in a high street is insignificant, then their word is final. Councillors are told that they cannot reject the application, as the developer will sue. No matter how well-qualified objectors are, their opinions count for nothing.

There is no compensation for the traders who lose their businesses or residents who suffer loss of amenities. The only way objectors can be heard is by raising money to appoint even more experts to show that the predictions are wrong.

Jane Haylock
Ipswich

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 29

SIR – Charles Moore is correct when he says that the National Trust has generally chosen to concentrate on the property it owns for the nation. But its founders were not afraid to campaign to protect the countryside.

The evidence assembled by The Daily Telegraph has laid bare the devastating consequences for the English countryside, including green belts, if the Government’s draft National Planning Policy Framework were to be enacted in its present form.

The Government must have been hoping no one would read it. It bears the hallmarks of having been written by individuals with a vested interest in development. It is not an effective instrument of local democracy.

Most people acknowledge the need for more affordable housing, and the benefits of a simpler procedure for planning law. The case for the conservation campaign is not a dinosaur’s instinct to block these measures. It is to stand firm on the principle that has served us well for more than 60 years: that it is feasible to implement these objectives without weakening the protection of our ordinary countryside.

The Government proposes to replace the protection enshrined in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 with a presumption in favour of “sustainable” development. But the word sustainable will be interpreted to suit the developer.

The wish to preserve our countryside is a main reason for the huge membership of the National Trust, and has inspired our finest poetry and prose, our painters and musicians. It is needed for food, and is the key to our wildlife. Countless compatriots have sacrificed their lives for it.

The National Trust is right to have taken a lead in this campaign and deserves the support of the nation.

Sir Angus Stirling
Director General, National Trust, 1983-95

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 28

SIR – There would be no need for the controversy over the proposed planning reform if there were a tax on land value.

Vacant and underused sites would quickly be developed to their full potential, creating jobs and providing the incentive to build essential houses.

Michael J. Hawes
Newark, Nottinghamshire

SIR – Is there any recent development, no matter how unsuitable, which could not have been spun as “sustainable”?

Mark R. Sullivan
Bournemouth, Dorset

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 27

SIR – A minister in charge of some or other fiasco will often say that “lessons will be learnt”. The existing planning rules are not 1,000 pages of gibberish, but a collection of lessons learnt. They should not be confined to the “too hard” basket in favour of a few philosophical guidance notes on the back of a fag packet.

The correct approach should be to revisit all the clauses, understand why they were written in the first place and review their current relevance. If the debate was as simple as Greg Clark, the planning minister, would have us believe, the existing policy document would not have grown to 1,000 pages in the first place.

Philip Horton
Orpington, Kent

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 26

SIR – The payment of large sums of money to wind farm owners “not to produce electricity” is only one of the faults (Leading article, September 18). There is now an increasing amount of anecdotal evidence that the noise from offshore installations is having a detrimental effect on marine life.

Sound travels well under water and divers are reporting an absence of even the normal benthic species – those which inhabit the deepest water – at three miles’ distance. There is also the risk that endangered cetaceans (e.g. whales) may be affected, as they appear to be by other man-made seismic activity.

We need alternative sources of energy, but not at the expense of turning hundreds of square miles of seabed into desert.

Geoffrey Comber
Peel, Isle of Man

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 25

SIR – We had a full public debate over a large green belt planning application, with local councils and residents all opposed to the hideous planned development, and after that the matter went to the public inspector.

Having taken into account the landscape, traffic, schooling and area restrictions, the inspector ruled against the application.

I have now learnt that the Secretary of State has overruled the inspector; the planned 500 houses will go ahead. So much for local democracy, consultation and protection of our countryside.

H. M. Williams
Salisbury, Wiltshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 24

SIR – Why is the Coalition seeking to boost developers and threaten our countryside by bringing in new planning rules when there are thousands of homes for sale, many of them empty?

My house has been on the market at an affordable price for three years, and in a half-mile radius there are at least a dozen properties suitable for first-time buyers or young families.

Potential buyers are unable to find the necessary deposit to obtain a mortgage. A far better way to fuel the economy would be to get the housing market up and running by offering some real help to first-time buyers of properties.

Avril Malec
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 23

SIR – Was the Prime Minister’s promise cast from ferro-concrete or a weaker mix?

Andrew Smith
Epping, Essex

SIR – The more Greg Clark, the minister for decentralisation, gives soothing responses to criticisms of the draft National Planning Policy Framework (Letters, September 19), the more he betrays ignorance of how the system actually works.

It makes sense to reduce the number of pages of planning policy, but the big costs derive from legal challenges, through appeals and judicial reviews. Given a number of loosely worded overarching statements, what the NPPF means in practice will not be clear until case law is established through the appeal system.

Mr Clark may learn to his cost that he has lost control of the planning process and that the consequences will come to a head just in time for the next election.

Laurence Heath
Wokingham, Berkshire

Hands off our Land letters from 22 September

SIR – The current acrimonious and confrontational arguments over the National Planning Policy Framework tell us that the same words can bear widely different interpretations.

These arguments are a foretaste of what we can expect in our neighbourhoods as every development is fought over.

At the moment around 80 per cent of all developments are approved. If nobody can agree on what the NPPF actually means we could end up with a slower, more expensive planning system in which many more decisions are taken on appeal.

Just six weeks before the draft NPPF was published, the Natural Environment White Paper was issued; this seems to have come from a different government altogether. The White Paper promised that “through reforms of the planning system, we will take a strategic approach to planning for nature within and across local areas. This approach will guide development to the best locations, encourage greener design and enable development to enhance natural networks.”

This pledge is ignored by the Government’s planning proposals. We urge the Government to address this policy dysfunction, revise the NPPF and do what they undertook to do but have failed to do – promote sustainable development.

A sustainable future requires both grey and green infrastructure (parks, drainage, urban trees) and an intelligent way of deciding what goes where. The NPPF does not take us very far towards a better way of achieving this.

Jo Watkins, President, Landscape Institute, London WC1

Hands off our Land letters from 21 September

SIR – Unless the Government's proposed National Planning Policy Framework is changed, many communities will be put at increased risk of flooding.

The withdrawal of all planning policy statements has, at a stroke, scrapped the carefully constructed raft of technical guidance, context and definitions built up over years, through professional debate, appeal decisions and case law. This raft supports every council in drawing up plans and determining planning applications. It also supports developers by specifying the information they need to provide.

We are particularly worried about the implications of withdrawing Planning Policy Statement 25 – Planning and Flood Risk. This document was only published in 2006, and since then has brought essential structure and consistency to the assessment of flood risk from new development. PPS25 has helped deter building on flood plains and made developers quantify how their plans could affect existing communities.

Every one of the 150 community flood groups we support is put at greater flood risk by the withdrawal of PPS25. The new framework keeps some key words from the policy statement, but has removed the definitions, context and technical guidance that gives them meaning. Without definitions, the words have little value.

We foresee endless argument, where developers tussle over the levels of protection required and barristers have a field day reopening legal arguments closed by PPS25. Will anyone know whether the houses built are protected against flooding, or if other communities are put at greater risk? Will the uncertainty make new houses uninsurable?

Does the Government really want to throw away a key part of the structure that helps protects its citizens from flooding?

Charles Tucker
Chairman, National Flood Forum
Bewdley, Worcestershire

SIR – I remember the first time I brought my American-born wife to Britain. As we were approaching Heathrow, she looked out of the aircraft window and commented: "There's so many green fields, I didn't expect that."

In the light of the new planning proposals, was that a moment to treasure?

Mark Wrightson
Rockford, Illinois, USA

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 20, 2011

SIR – The Sport and Recreation Alliance is deeply concerned by the lack of protection for sport and recreation facilities in the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). While we support the need to encourage sustainable development we cannot accept that it must be at the expense of valuable community facilities which enable physical activity and promote community cohesion.

Tim Lamb
Chief Executive, Sport and Recreation Alliance, London SW1

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 17, 2011

SIR – You report (September 15) that developers are sitting on more than 300,000 plots with planning permission for new houses.

No brown or green land should be built on until builders have used up the land bank already in their greedy hands. And, clearly, changes to the planning system are unnecessary.

Roy Widdup
Hadleigh, Essex

SIR – Having spent 40 years converting buildings to alternative uses I’m astonished that so many owners sit on derelict property and leave it undeveloped.

Within a few miles from where I write there is an old workhouse and a disused maltings with planning consent for a total of more than 100 residential units. They have stood undeveloped for years. These brownfield sites would be equivalent to about 10 acres of greenfield.

Given that this is rural Norfolk, how many similar sites must there be?

Simon Longe
Green Loddon, Norfolk

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 16, 2011

SIR – Few of us want the countryside to become merely a retirement home for the middle classes and we need more affordable housing for young people, though mainly in towns.

However, the relaxation of planning procedures could lead to yet more inappropriate housing in areas lacking public transport and other important services. In his book Visions of England, Roy Strong says the countryside remains the "touchstone of English identity", and this despite the fact that most of us, myself included, live in towns and suburbs, and that the reality of rural life has fallen short of William Blake's longed-for Jerusalem.

Philip Ruler
Bromsgrove, Worcestershire

SIR – I have scanned your logo, enlarged it, and will wear it as a lapel badge when I attend the Conservatives Party conference in October. I urge others to do the same.

B. A. Hilton
Ascot, Berkshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 15, 2011

SIR – When I worked as a planner, I received visits from American local government officials eager to know how we managed to ensure that our countryside was not replaced by urban expansion.

They were intrigued to learn that our system of development control allowed local people to conserve what they valued while allowing developers to demonstrate the need for attractive and profitable schemes that enhanced their communities. They had mistakenly assumed that control would mean bankruptcy for the development industry.

If the Government has its way, such visits will not happen again. The presumption against development is as important a principle in managing the rural/urban balance as the presumption of innocence until proved guilty is in law.

Professor Graham Ashworth
Preston, Lancashire

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 14, 2011

SIR – If, as reported, the Conservative Party has accepted large donations from property developers (report, September 10), and then had some sitting on a body which has dictated the proposed changes in planning regulations, then that is not only despicable, but crassly stupid.

The changes must be consigned to the bin. Start again from scratch. Failure to do so taints the party with corruption. They will rue that at the next election.

Alan Kibblewhite

Blandford Forum, Dorset

SIR – The Conservative Party openly declares and publishes online its donations in accordance with Electoral Commission rules.

Unlike Labour, we are not reliant on taxpayer funding and the trade unions. Instead, our donations are from a broad range of Conservative supporters and not dependent on any sector or interest group. Ministerial meetings with third parties are declared by the relevant departments.

The Coalition Government's planning policy is driven solely by the national interest of simplifying Labour's complex and bureaucratic planning rules so we can provide homes for young people and families and promote local jobs, while maintaining the protection of green space, heritage and the natural environment. These are coalition policies based on principles laid out before the election by both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. There is absolutely no link between donations to the Conservative Party and Coalition Government policies.

Baroness Warsi
Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party

London SW1

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 13, 2011

SIR – Your report about construction industry support for the Conservatives gives another cause for concern about the Government’s national planning policy framework (“Tories given millions by property developers”, report, September 10).

We are parish councillors in a village that in 1991 had 229 homes. We have a proud history and are fiercely protective of the character of the village.

Yet in the past 20 years, we have added more than 60 houses or conversions, including affordable homes. Adding more than 25 per cent to our housing total has been achieved with the support of most residents because we have resisted developments that were inappropriate on account of location, scale or design.

The result is a village where the old and the new have been combined harmoniously and where an expanded population is enjoying village life in an unspoiled rural setting.

The proposed changes to the planning regulations will remove the protections that we have relied on hitherto. Therefore, the Government's claims that the Localism Bill will restore power to the people are disingenuous or, at worst, deceitful.

Terry Quinn, John King, Chris Grocott, Ian Haywood

Wortham, Suffolk

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 12, 2011

SIR – A recent drive to Andover took me through green fields being developed for housing, and then, less than a mile on, through a large industrial estate with many, if not most, large units empty and boarded up.

Does this make sense?

Alan Sherwood

Wonston, Hampshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 11, 2011

SIR – In the past, architects designed and built high-rise blocks of flats on large estates. Years later, they admitted making a mistake, and many tower blocks are being pulled down.

Will developers and planners feel the same in years to come about irreversible destruction of our green countryside?

Dr Peter Islip

Sanderstead, Surrey

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 10, 2011

SIR – So that’s that then. The decision has already been made by the Planning Inspectorate to start following the draft guidelines (report, September 7), on the basis of “normal procedure”.

Will MPs now be made redundant?

Valerie Yeoman
Birdham, West Sussex

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 9, 2011

SIR – What on earth is this Government playing at with the relaxation of planning guidance? Is it looking for a cast-iron guarantee of losing the next election? Gaining a clutch of developers' votes hardly compensates for the loss of those of the whole rural community.

Don Minterne
Dorchester, Dorset

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 8, 2011

SIR – Congratulations to The Daily Telegraph for taking a stand on the proposed reforms. The pressure for house-building around Devizes will mean that the presumption in favour of sustainable development will have particular significance for this market town.

The vagueness of the terminology will mean that the developers' lawyers will be able to tie local regulations in knots.

The going rate to fight a planning appeal has been around £50,000; Wiltshire council is poorly placed to afford such sums. The developers know this.

Jeff Ody
Devizes, Wiltshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 7, 2011

SIR – Greg Clark, the planning minister, says the planning reforms will give communities a chance to influence decisions (Letters, September 3). Not so. The reforms are an all-encompassing imposition from above.

The fundamental principle of the draft National Planning Policy Framework, that planning must not act as an impediment to “growth” (i.e. development), means that no Local or Neighbourhood Plan can restrict development. If the final say is left to local communities, they are restricted to only being allowed to say “yes” to development, not to say “no”.

Even if a local community does not want a proposed development, the developer will always win. Mr Clark’s proclamations do not ring true.

Dr Gavin Rider

Winscombe, Somerset

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 6, 2011

SIR – Greg Clark, the planning minister, is still under the impression that proposed regulations will give more local control.

Daily Telegraph readers can see through this, knowing that parish or borough councils working with cuts will be bullied by large national or multi-national companies with deep pockets to pay barristers. They will "prove" sustainability. Wind farms will also be through on the nod, because it is assumed that "green" and "sustainable" are interchangeable.

But would you expect any different from an MP who signs letters with the job title "Decentralisation Minister"?

Peter Blunt

Bedford

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 5, 2011

SIR – The most important housing need is affordable homes. We should also protect our ability to feed ourselves. By making a “presumption in favour of sustainable development” (whatever “sustainable” means), the Government will achieve the opposite.

Only a small fraction of the houses that developers deliver are affordable, because otherwise they don’t make enough profit. It is easier to develop on green fields.

The Government should scrap its plans, return to a presumption in favour of using brownfield sites, and create incentives for developers and councils to build affordable houses.

Tony Hughes

Harwell, Oxfordshire

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 3, 2011

SIR – Greg Clark, the planning minister, need look no further than Tunbridge Wells, his own constituency, to find people who do not want thousands of new houses built in the fields around the town.

The infrastructure does not exist to support so many more people. The edge-of-town shopping centre is nearly always gridlocked with queues of traffic when the shops are open. There are no spare places in the schools, not enough doctors and dentists. Road surfaces are appalling and rubbish collection is once every two weeks.

An old hospital site has been identified with potential for hundreds of new homes. Come election time, Greg Clark may find that voters will not forgive him.

Paula Bates

Tunbridge Wells, Kent

Hands Off Our Land letters from September 2, 2011: in full

SIR – Greg Clark, the planning minister, cannot think of a single example of a place where the residents don't want any more housing (Letters, August 29). Here's one.

The village of Whalley, in the rural Ribble Valley, is under attack from developers who want to build some 1,000 houses around the village, all on greenfield sites. Residents are opposed to such development. This opposition is replicated in other parts of the valley and indeed in hundreds of areas in the country.

It is obvious that these measures are designed to kick-start the economy. The economy will eventually begin to grow without these measures, but once the countryside is concreted over it will never come back. People are right to insist that we preserve it for our future.

The Localism Bill has been exposed as a sham which encourages "local" decisions on planning only if they are decisions in favour of more development. The Ribble Valley is a safe Tory seat, but I would remind Mr Clark that the valley has punished previous Tory administrations by voting its MP out of office when it was faced with something which it felt to be unreasonable and against its best interests.

Nick Walker

Whalley, Lancashire

Hands Off Our Land letters from August 30, 2011

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