Government to protect garden sites

Government to protect garden sites

» 9th June 2010 «

The new government could be set to change planning laws that protect gardens from developers.

According to the BBC, communities minister Greg Clark plans to reclassify public gardens currently listed as brownfield sites to stop new houses being built on them.

Currently, many common green spaces are in the same class as abandoned industrial and railway land, meaning developers find it easy to get permission to build on them.

However, the government is concerned that this could ruin important public facilities and lead to increased population density.

Recent statistics show that the number of homes built on previously residential land, such as gardens, rose to one in four in 2008, compared to just one in ten 11 years earlier.

However, former deputy prime minister John Prescott has defended Labour's policy, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme that it was necessary to meet housing demand.

He claimed that the new government is more concerned about protecting the few millionaires who benefit from gardens than looking out for the many families who cannot find affordable housing.

Meanwhile, the Royal Horticultural Society recently revealed that the government is to pay £9 million to a compost manufacturer as compensation for ceasing its peat mining activities in Cumbria.

Posted by Martin Corby