A grand for your green

This Tory-led Government’s planning changes are dangerous and out of touch. But their response has been panic and dismissal of genuine concerns. Now, three months from their introduction, people are beginning to realise just how bizarre some of their plans really are.

The moment I learned they wanted to charge villages a £1000 to register their village green was the moment I realised the plans were losing a sense of reality.

A grand to register their village green. Crazy politics and crazy policy.

They say their planning system is going to give local communities a real say in what happens to the places we live in. That would be sensible but it simply isn’t the reality of the proposals.

The original village green register was a sensible idea. Under the current system a green is any land which a significant number of inhabitants of any area have used for lawful sports and pastimes for the past 20 years. We introducted it in 2006 to allow communities to protect some recreational space. There are now around 3650 registered greens in England and Wales.

In some cases communities have made applications to register land once a development was proposed or underway holding things up or stopping them altogether. So a reform that would better protect real greens while not stopping legitimate development is reasonable. There must be a localist way to balance the needs of local people and the aims of developers without conflict. But charging for communities to register land is not the way to achieve this.

The Government plans to charge communities up to £1000 to register a piece of land as a village green and protect it from unwanted development. Alongside these charges the community would have to jump through extra bureaucratic hoops – including a mysteriously titled “Character Test” – to successfully get their land some protection.

But, when village churches are struggling to deal with metal theft and rural pubs are calling time up and down the country, it simply doesn’t make sense to charge communities to protect land that is of huge social and recreational importance. It is not localist and will help create a planning system that involves fewer people, not more.

Even the assumptions on which the proposals are based are deeply flawed. The Government seems to think that communities only value green space when it is threatened by development. This is not true. In reality they don’t register land just to stop development but more often than not because they attach real value to the space.

All this from the party who used to cheer warm beer and the thwack of willow on leather.

A grand for a green. Nice line, you might say, but not relevant to the cities and towns that are desperate for more homes. Wrong, I’m afraid. The proposals suggest that the only land the communities ought to protect is the traditional village green. In reality, ‘village greens’ can come in any form and open spaces in towns and cities are often just as valued by the people that use them than those who live in traditional villages. We all need a communal space to sit, enjoy the sun, (or build a snowman!) and share with our friends and neighbours.

Planning is a positive tool which can be used to improve places and the lives of people who live in them. Unfortunately, this Government thinks planning is merely an obstacle to be overcome. They need to change their approach if they are ever to achieve real localism in the planning system.

The right development in the right place is vital to creating a good place to live and building the homes we need. It is precisely because we have a growing housing crisis that we need a decent planning system. This need is much more likely to be met by developers if they know that a project is not going to be held up by an application for Town or Village Green status. They will be further encouraged if they know that they have the support of local residents.

This is why instead of introducing new barriers and fees to make it harder for communities to protect land the Government should be encouraging communities to register land as town and village greens whilst drawing up Neighbourhood Plans. These Neighbourhood Plans will also identify areas in which development would be encouraged to take place.

In order to do this local communities should be given guidance to help identify what land may count as ‘local green space’ and encouraged to register this land for protection whilst they are drawing up Local and Neighbourhood Plans.

This would mean that residents and developers know exactly what land is available for development and what land is not. This would have to be supported by planning guidance which makes explicit the relationship between Neighbourhood, Local and National Plans.

Real localism involves giving neighbourhoods more control over their local area, not making them pay to have a say in what is done to the land they use. So I say to the planning minister get your grand off my green. Your system doesn’t work to protect open space or build more homes.

Roberta Blackman-Woods is the Labour MP for the City of Durham and shadow planning minister