This is Devon -- A Government planning minister seems to be set upon an idea that will allow the development of any old building large or small without planning permission – Martin Hesp believes it could irreparably wreck our countryside Governments are always coming up with crazy ideas – it's partly what we love about them – after all who, or what, else would we get to rant and rave about if it wasn't for the politicians who dream up regular doses of codswallop? In general, our ability to let off steam in the direction of Big Brother is just that – a load of hot air – because what comes around, goes around, and the decisions of our temporary leaders get overturned by the next lot who have a raft of their own madness to pedal. But it's when our movers and shakers dream up schemes which can't easily be undone that the level-headed public is most likely to demand that the brakes be firmly applied – and examples of this often relate to matters in rural Britain. Because that is where the innocent, much-loved, oft-ignored, vital, life-giving under-represented, countryside exists – a thing that, once ruined, cannot easily be put back together again. It is an irreplaceable asset. Wreck it once and you wreck it forever. We've been knocking seven-bells out of the countryside since we crept across a frozen English Channel shortly after the last Ice Age, but in the past 100 years, at least, we had the sense – despite economic recessions and two world wars – to realise that our rural acres were so important to the wellbeing of the nation they needed protection. National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) were formed and for more that 60 years there's been a general consensus that such places should have a higher status of protection than is the case with most landscapes. Few people disagree with this – indeed, many, many millions of people visit such places every year to enjoy their special qualities, to the extent that national parks are able to generate vast amounts of money just by being there. All well and good, until one day when a government minister takes a little jaunt through the countryside and notices some redundant farm buildings. He comes up with a brilliant idea – which is the sort of thing eager politicians are prone to do in economic recessions when they believe anything and everything in the name of wealth generation is fair game. I'm told that planning minister Nick Boles really did dream up his extraordinary and potentially disastrous idea while travelling through the countryside – and I'm guessing this is what he must have thought: "Blimey – look at all those barns and useless old buildings. Wouldn't it be great if you could somehow wave a magic wand and turn them all into useful, much-needed homes…" Ministers don't, despite their fondest wishes, have magic wands – but they do have amazing powers. Mr Boles believes he has the power to simply bulldoze all the hard-won, much-debated, planning rules and regulations concerning such buildings into a pile of rubble. If his dream comes to fruition it will mean anyone, anywhere, lucky enough to own a redundant building – whether large, small, old or new – really will be able to wave a magic wand and turn corrugated iron into money. They will, like Cinderella gazing at a pumpkin, be able to watch their old shed metamorphose into – not one, but three homes – without facing a single hurdle in the way of planning permission. This will wreck large swathes of the Westcountry's wondrous landscapes. The British countryside will, within a decade, become metamorphose into suburbia. At this point anyone with half a brain might sit up and do what sensible business people and property developers would do… They will attach a profit-and-loss account to the business plan. On the plus-side a few country landowners will be able to make quick fortunes – which they can spend on large German cars and Caribbean holidays. Local builders will be able to make hay while the brief sunshine of agricultural redevelopment shines. And that is it – there is no other upside – save for the fact that a small number of farmers' children might be able to get themselves a cheap home. It is obvious that homes, built in beautiful rural areas where there are very few jobs, will not be converted in order to house a few low-paid locals. They would be sold off as desirable holiday cottages or second homes. The loss side of the account is so frighteningly lengthy you'd need a book rather than a newspaper article to list it all. I cannot think of a valley or a hillside in either Exmoor or Dartmoor that would not be blighted by this mad idea that all planning rules should be binned. But I should be planning to laugh all the way to the bank – I've got a disused building in my national-park-located garden that I could convert into a large sum of dosh. I'd have to act fast however – because I can think of at least 20 other buildings within a mile that could be similarly converted. What price then, in a flooded market, an expensively converted barn? It's been estimated that there are more than 30,000 such buildings in the Westcountry's national parks and AONBs. Can you imagine all the telegraph poles and power cables, private drives and cesspits, garages and car-ports, washing lines and greenhouses, conservatories and satellite dishes, that would desecrate our beloved countryside if this one crazy politician has his way? There'll be individuals reading this rubbing their hands with glee in expectation of a barn-conversion gold rush. The rest of us must do all we can, while there's still time, to prevent this unrepairable desecration.
Reported by This is 2 hours ago.
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