CLA in Action

We met recently with a group of MPs from the South West and were able to give them a breakfast of regionally produced foods. We had a constructive meeting and were able to highlight the issues that concern you, our members.

In particular we congratulated them for the Government’s determination to tackle bovine TB with a package of measures which includes culling infected animals. We also congratulated them on the minister’s commitment to invest £830million in rolling out broadband across the country and to create rural hubs which will enable surrounding rural communities to leap frog on to fast broadband – something we have been campaigning for. We emphasised that what still concerns us is the seven or eight per cent of the country which will not receive high broadband speeds – as that will, inevitably, be the more remote, rural areas where access to effective broadband is as critical as it is anywhere else.

We spoke about coastal access and the fact that coastal properties and businesses were now facing an uncertain future with an act that had put a blight on properties into the future and we highlighted the extraordinary waste of public money on a project which will deliver little or no public good.

We discussed planning and our concerns about strategic planning across our region and we asked them to consider how we as a representative organisation might best access central government. We outlined our concerns about the way in which Local Enterprise Partnerships were being driven and the fact that we felt there was a genuine incompatibility between large urban conurbations and rural areas with an LEP context.

The Government’s Local Growth white paper has provided welcome recognition of the importance of the rural economy – something which simply further underlines the importance of there being effective rural representation on the new LEPs. The consensus was that the Government should be prepared to consider allowing rural areas – possibly quite large rural areas – to come together to form LEPs.

We spoke about the uplands and the importance of these not being designated on a height above sea level basis and we emphasised the importance of the public goods provided by our upland areas the cost of which could not be recouped from the market.

Finally we discussed the CAP – the likely problems and pitfalls and the need for a clear understanding among our home-based MPs of the implications for SW agriculture and land ownership post 2013.

I would also like to bring to your attention some specific technical seminars we will be holding in the New Year. Following the success and interest in our seminars in the south of the region looking at solar photovoltaics, we will be holding additional seminars on 11 January at Hartham Park in Wiltshire and on 18 January at Beaulieu Hotel in Hampshire in conjunction with the CLA South East region.

We have two legal seminars in Wiltshire with Thring Townsend Lee & Pembertons in February and Porter Dodson in Dorset in March.

With responsibility for strategic and local planning moving to new regimes we will be holding three seminars during January and February in Wiltshire, Somerset and Cornwall. Fenella Collins, the CLA’s senior planning adviser will help members through the policy and update us on what the CLA will be lobbying for in future and more practically other speakers will address how to help you win difficult planning applications.