Green Belt destroyed - Daily Express John Ingham

By John Ingham
Environment Editor

MASSIVE development of Green Belt land is "making a mockery" of Gordon Brown's pledge to protect it, campaigners claimed yesterday.
Nearly 30,000 acres have been lost since Labour came to power in 1997, said the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
At least 45,240 homes, equivalent to a city the size of Bath, have been built on the land and worse is to come, say the environmentalists.
The Green Belt was under threat from Bournemouth to Lancaster and from Bristol to West Yorkshire.
The CPRE claimed Government inspectors were undermining ministers'
claims to be protecting the 70-year-old defence against urban sprawl by suggesting it should not be treated as permanent.
London's Green Belt boundaries were being reviewed in 18 locations with a view to new housing. In Nottingham inspectors have recommended removal of Green Belt on three out of four sides of the city.
Two of Gordon Brown's eco-town proposal, Rossington in South Yorkshire and Weston Otmoor near Oxford, would also probably need Green Belt land.
CPRE praised the protection of Green Belt in the North-west, the creation of the New Forest national park and the refusal of 'damaging' developments in the West Midlands.
But CPRE spokesman Paul Miner said: 'In reality the Green Belt is being seriously eroded.
'Too much development has been permitted, and Government inspectors appear to be interpreting policy in their own way. This is making a mockery of the permanence which the Green Belt is supposed to have.'
Shadow Local Government Sec-retary, Eric Pickles, said: 'Gordon Brown's promise that he would protect the Green Belt has been exposed as utterly worthless.
'Government inspectors are letting rip with the concrete mixer and adding to the unsustainable urban sprawl by bulldozing the Green Belt.
'This is the green light for Green Belt destruction.
'Labour's policies are only going to deliver sprawling housing estates, without proper infrastructure, much of it on flood plains.
'Changes to planning laws mean residents will be powerless to stop unelected bureaucrats building the sink estates of the 21st century.'
The chairman of the Local Government Association's environment board, Councillor Paul Bettison, said Green Belt land was under threat because of rising Government housing targets.
But planning minister Iain Wright said: 'The suggestion that the amount of Green Belt is falling overall is misleading. Since 1997 Green Belt land has grown by 82,000 acres.'
END.