CPRE reveals 'Utopian' vision for UK countryside

Published by Jon Land for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Communities, Education, Environment, Local Government

Countryside visited by school parties as part of the curriculum and more holidaying families, more organic food and payments to farmers to conserve wildlife, homes built largely on brownfield sites and a greener Green Belt may sound like a Utopian vision for our rural areas.

But it is a vision the Campaign to Protect Rural England laid out today in a bid to provoke a national debate on what our relationship with the countryside will be in 2026.

The view of the future, described in the 20:26 Vision - What Future For The Countryside? report, aims to explore how things might look in two decades' time when the conservation charity celebrates its centenary.

The report's ideas, based on a paper by former CPRE director of communications Nicholas Schoon and seminars by the charity, lays out possible changes to food and farming, life in cities, towns and villages, planning regulations, lifestyle and leisure and how we deal with climate change in relation to the countryside.

It acknowledges the need for new homes, but suggests that three-quarters of the demand by 2026 could be on brownfield sites, with some 1.3 million built on greenfield sites.

Even with 200,000 homes a year being built to meet housing needs, just 36 square kilometres of countryside would be eaten up - half the rate we have seen so far this century, the CPRE said.

And if the Government took a decision to halt the UK population at 70 million fewer homes would be needed.

According to the report, most greenfield building should happen around existing towns and cities, which would require small adjustments to the Green Belt, but most would survive intact and would be enhanced to allow many more visitors to "the countryside next door".

New rural homes could be subsidised to allow local people to live in them, while in towns, growth in green roofs and urban nature reserves, parks and woodlands would "green" the urban landscape.

On the farming front, we could see an end to tariffs on imported food but an increased awareness of food security, meaning most of the food consumed in the UK is grown here.

Farmers could receive a "substantial" part of their income from audited protection and enhancement of landscapes and features such as hedgerows and grasslands, with wildlife making a big comeback.

Organic farming would have grown, along with "farm clubs" for direct sales to consumers, farmers markets and vegetable boxes.

The CPRE also sees a role for some home-grown biofuels, with crops such as oilseed rape and fast-growing coppice for combined heat and power creation covering a "small but significant" percentage of the countryside.

To combat climate change, land managers could be paid for conserving woodlands, peat bogs and other wetlands and farmers could generate power on-farm from methane and biofuels.

Rather than the countryside becoming littered with wind farms, there should be huge increase in small-scale renewables, while adaptation measures could include retreat from coastal areas at risk of flooding - to be turned over to salt marshes - and wildlife corridors to help species survive.

Shaun Spiers, CPRE's chief executive, acknowledged that some people might find the vision too optimistic and eccentric or "rather precious, middle-class or middle-aged".

But he said: "We want to show how necessary development can be accommodated without eating up too much countryside, and how the countryside's value - as an amenity, in supplying food, in helping us mitigate and adapt to climate change - can be enhanced."

Writer Bill Bryson, president of CPRE, said a national debate was needed following discussion last year among members of the conservation organisation about what the countryside might look like in 2026.

"It should be debated by everyone, from farmers to business people, planners to village shop owners.

"We believe we can all take action to protect the countryside, enhance it and promote its importance. That's why we've outlined one possible, positive vision, and set up a debates page for all views on the future of our countryside," he said.

:: People can read the report and join the debate at www.cpre.org.uk