Safeguarded land: a pernicious and horrifying prospect

Safeguarded for who and for what?  It sounds so nice and cosy; oh, the land in my village is being “safeguarded”. Beware the weasel words of the clever drafter of the National Policy Planning Framework [NPPF], he’s out to fool you on behalf of this government.

The NPPF Para 85 gives the local planning authority [LPA] the right to declare land as “safeguarded” during the Local Plan process, so what does it really mean? It means a faceless planning officer, in cahoots with their paid-for lackeys the planning consultants, taking a pen and drawing a line on a map around parcels of Green Belt land, effectively re-drawing the Green Belt boundary, extracting them from the Green Belt and declaring them “safeguarded”.  

Destroy, destroy, destroy…

How do these people sleep at night?  The Pegasus consultancy was re-engaged by the council to re-assess its own flawed previous Green Belt & Countryside Study, wherein Volume 4 written in response to the changed circumstances induced by the NPPF was roundly criticised by residents across the borough for errors in fact and analysis, and write a new Volume 5.  Its astonishing isn’t it, how in a democratic society the gamekeeper can be allowed to let the fox into the chicken coop again.