[CPEO-BIF] "garden grabs" for BF redevelopment in the UK

["Robert Hersh" <b_hersh@verizon.net>]

Thirty thousand gardens every year 'torn up' due to Labour's policies

March 3, 2007
The Evening Standard
London, UK

Thirty thousand gardens a year are being torn up by housing developers
because John Prescott's planning rules classify them as 'brownfield' sites.

Campaigners are demanding urgent action to halt the destruction which they
claim is turning Labour's high-profile boasts of saving the countryside
through brownfield building into 'a con'.

MPs are being urged to back a private members bill to reclassify gardens as
greenfield land, making it far harder for developers to concrete over lawns,
flower beds and vegetable patches in search of quick profits.

Without such protection, they warn, an area of garden equivalent to 2,700
football pitches will disappear over the next decade, as some 15 per cent of
the 150,000 new homes in the UK each year are built on gardens.

Such a dramatic loss of green space will have a serious effect on the
quality of life in Britain's towns and cities, campaigners claim, as well as
harming wildlife and raising the risk of flooding in some areas.

Conservative MP Greg Clark, who is heading the campaign along with Labour
backbencher Chris Mullin, said he took up the cause after constituents
voiced the anger and puzzlement that their local authority appeared
powerless to stop gardens being built on.

For the entire article, see:
<<http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23388101-details/Thirty%20thous
and%20gardens%20every%20year%20'torn%20up'%20due%20to%20Prescott's%20policie
s/article.do>>


Bob Hersh
CPEO


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