A Green and Pleasant land?
As Ada Doom was wont to say, “there’s something nasty in the woodshed.”
Or as the South Hams Society might say, there may be cold comfort for tenant farmers if the Government’s land use strategy is implemented in full. Its analysis of the strategy reveals some eye opening statistics.
To achieve food security AND economic growth the equivalent of roughly one in every five English fields will cease to house crops or livestock and will instead be given over to housing estates, infrastructure, industrial- scale solar farms and woodlands, or the creation and restoration of coastal and lowland heathland habitats and the creation and restoration of peat-forming and peat-dependent habitats.
And of the 1.6Mha of land that will need to change use by 2050 around 9.4% (or 0.15Mha) will be needed to accommodate housing. That is roughly the equivalent of imposing another urban area the size of Greater London on the English countryside, while of the remaining land that will change, some will be required for such environmentally damaging purposes as infrastructure, data centres and battery storage facilities. “Significantly the scale of change will not be the same across England, with the change away from agricultural land usage being primarily targeted on land the government considers of lower agricultural value, as is the case with much of the land in the South Hams.”
It continues: “This could have serious implications for both our landscape and our tenant farmers, with the Tenant Farmers Association urgently calling for the government to explain how, for example, tenant farmers will be protected as solar developments advance across rural communities. With land owners here in the South Hams typically only able to realise around £100 per acre by renting it out their fields for agricultural purposes, the possibility of enjoying an index-linked £1,000 per acre – or ten times as much, for the next 50 years is likely to prove hard to resist. “
If you want to know more about this and ask some pertinent questions, the Society is holding a question time at Follaton House on April 10 at 6.30. The speakers will be Prof Michael Winter, a former member of Defra’s science advisory council and currently chair of the Devon Local Nature Partnership, and Sir Harry Studholme, a Devon farmer and former chair of the SW Regional Development Agency.
The land use strategy is just part of the Government’s whirlwind mission to reform local government and planning.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner announced: “These reforms are at the heart of our Plan for Change, ensuring we are backing the builders, taking on the blockers, and delivering the homes and infrastructure this country so badly needs.”
District councillors currently eyeing up vacancies in the Jobcentre or angling to grab land from a neighbour are having to draw up plans for the future at breakneck speed. (see previous Pulse stories)
How much say councillors will get in future on planning decisions willcome out in the wash but needless to say the South Hams Society isfollowing all this with a forensic eye.