Countryside campaigners Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has launched a campaign against a growing carve up of England's countryside that threatens to leave fields and woods at risk of being disfigured and neglected.
Small investors from across the globe are being sold plots of rural land on hundreds of sites across England in order to build homes on them. Their chances of success are very low and their 'investments' are likely to fail, because permission to develop cannot be obtained on the great majority of the land. But that has not stopped more than two dozen separate 'landbanking' operations from using glossy advertising and high pressure sales techniques to lure in gullible investors.
CPRE fears top economist Kate Barker's review of planning, commissioned by HM Treasury and published last week, could pour fuel on the flames of small investor landbanking. She called for a major review of Green Belt boundaries across England. Landbanking operators may use this to advertise hundreds more plots on Green Belt land for sale, claiming their protected status may soon be lost following the Barker review.
CPRE is combining with MPs from all parties to call for the Government to clamp down on the schemes. Greg Mulholland, Liberal Democrat MP for Leeds North West, has today issued an Early Day Motion (494) supporting the campaign.
CPRE has found nearly 30 operators involved in buying up land in open countryside and subdividing it into small plots, sometimes with stakes and fences. They then market the plots, mostly via the Internet, as having potential for development, with inflated prices to match. Yet they do not have the necessary authorisation they need, both from planning authorities and the Financial Services Authority, to realise the potential they refer to - and little hope of ever getting it. Many use seductive but highly questionable claims to suck in investors from all over the globe.
CPRE has surveyed the activities of these companies and found some 200 separate sites across England's countryside are affected. Once subdivided and sold, the sites are at risk of being disfigured or neglected. The Government has recently proposed a small change in planning law to prevent the landbanking operators from subdividing land into small plots with unsightly fences and posts. CPRE welcomes the proposal, but on its own it will not be enough to tackle the growing problem. Much more needs to be done across Government. Councils need to be able to remove fences and stakes already in place, and Government urgently needs to use the powers it has in company and property law to curtail the landbanking operations.
