Ros Coward, Professor Emerita of Journalism at Roehampton University, has written in the Guardian this week that local action groups are protesting to save stretches of the countryside from destruction, including housing projects and road building projects planned on green-belts

He maintains that the current level of destructive development is a ‘nationwide problem’ that is changing the character of the countryside towards ‘urban sprawl’, and inflicting irreversible damage on wildlife.

Since the Government introduced the national planning policy framework in 2012, Mr Coward argues the planning system has increasingly favoured developers with legislation that insisted councils set housing targets without the land to meet those numbers.

Local authorities were forced to redefine green-belt areas as ‘available for development’.

Moreover, he claims that Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick MP (Con)’s planning reforms will impose an American system of zoning along with a presumption in favour of development, and housing targets imposed by central Government and local input side-lined, all while doing ‘nothing’ to increase the number of affordable homes across the country.

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The Guardian - The government's relentless push for development is destroying rural England