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| Link to web site |
"A Conservative council is set to defy the government over a relaxation of planning rules for building extensions.
"The proposals, covering England and intended to boost the economy, will allow larger home and business extensions without planning permission.
"But amid fears of a rash of ugly extensions, Richmond council officials in south-west London are considering ways to circumvent the policy."
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| Link to web site |
"George Maile of Burtonhole Close is calling for Barnet Council to prevent the killing of trees at the Old Camdenians Football Club, also in Burtonhole Close.
"Mr Maile, who is retired and lives next door to the club, claims that a number of trees in the “naturally beautiful tree line” have already been cleared and that more are in danger."
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| Link to web site |
"... Shaun Spiers, the chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said:
"We would have hoped for much stronger defence of the green belt than the [new planning] minister gave in Parliament."
"Asked about Nick Boles' comments, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman denied there were plans to make it easier to build on the green belt. He said:
"There are flexibilities within the current planning regime – in some parts of the country, they are quite good at using those flexibilities.
We have a national planning framework which was finalised quite recently, and there isn’t any plan to change that."
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| Link to The Economist |
"CYCLING north through London, you experience the city’s history. Bloomsbury has grand 18th-century mansions. Farther out, in Camden, you pass pretty Victorian terraces. In Finchley, the houses are neat 1930s villas. And then the city simply stops.
"At the edge of the pre-war suburbs of Barnet there are fields.
"Traffic fumes give way to bird calls and the acrid smell of smoke from a bonfire on a nearby farm. This scraggy patch of land, part of London’s green belt, has been protected from the bulldozers for nearly 60 years. Some in the government would like to relax the belt a few notches."
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| Link to web site |
"George Osborne
has signalled plans for a major deregulation of planning laws, raising
the prospect of allowing more development of green belt land.
"In
an interview on Sunday, the chancellor of the exchequer said he wanted
to see more 'imaginative' thinking by planning authorities, which could
allow building on previously protected land.
"His words will anger
some ministers and members of the coalition who have campaigned for
protected green belts around urban areas to remain free of development."
