Campaigns and Issues:

Regional Spatial Strategy

The Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) is the development plan for the North West for the next 15 years. It sets out how many houses will be built and broadly where, the broad locations for significant economic development, transport priorities, environmental objectives and how energy will be generated and waste disposed of.

CPRE have been closely involved with the consultation on and development of the Strategy, which will have profound implications for the environment, towns, cities, villages and countryside of the North West.

We played a very active part in the Examination in Public of the draft plan between October 2006 and February 2007. The Panel who conducted the Examination produced their report and recommendations in May 2007, many of which reflected the arguments made by CPRE. The Government published their proposed changes to the plan as a result of these recommendations and consulted on them in spring 2008. We agreed with many of these changes, in as far as they reflected the recommendations in the Panel Report. However, we also have some remaining concerns, the most significant of which are:-

Housing numbers unchanged but targets to be treated as minimums, not maximums. This means that there is now no ceiling on the amount of new houses that can be built, making it impossible to adequately assess impact on transport, water and social infrastructure, or the wider environment.
Entirely new tier of settlements prioritised for development in overall spatial framework
CO2 reduction targets removed
Landscape and other considerations excessively down-played in policy promoting renewables

Merton rule-esque policy amended to remove quotas and thresholds

Our response to this consultation is available from Regional Policy Officer Andy Yuille at andyy@cpre.org.uk. The Government will probably publish the final adopted strategy in late summer 2008.