Pro-development belt tightening poses 'threat to green belt'

摘要

The government's presumption in favour of sustainable development could make it difficult for local councils to block environmentally unfriendly schemes. That is the warning from one of the advisers who helped the government to draft its new planning policies. Simon Marsh, acting head of sustainable development at wildlife charity the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, was a member of the Practitioners Advisory Croup. Decentralisation minister Greg Clark invited Marsh and the group's three other members to write the first draft of the National Planning Policy Framework, including a presumption in favour of sustainable development.