The Woodland Trust\u00a0has raised concerns that in some areas,\u00a0local planners are\u00a0still not safeguarding ancient woodland and trees in line with the changes made to the\u00a0National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)\u00a0in July 2019.<\/p>\n
The Woodland Trust has been lobbying for over two decades to have these changes introduced, which provide the same protection for ancient woodland and trees that\u00a0Listed\u00a0buildings have always received.<\/p>\n
Paragraph 175c1 of the NPPF states that when local planning authorities are determining applications, they should consider whether: “development resulting in the loss or deterioration of irreplaceable habitats (such as ancient woodland and ancient or veteran trees) should be refused, unless there are wholly exceptional reasons and a suitable compensation strategy exists”<\/p>\n
The leading charity for conservation cites that over the last 12 months, \u2019Inappropriate\u00a0developments, such as caravan parks or chicken and dairy farms, have been approved by a number of local authorities, resulting\u00a0in unacceptable loss of or damage to ancient woodland.\u2019<\/p>\n
The Trust claims that despite its efforts to work closely with and support local planning authorities, some are not aware of the revised changes and guidance directions or choose to \u2018suitably enforce them.\u2019<\/p>\n
Footnote 58 says the exceptions include nationally significant infrastructure projects, orders under\u00a0the Transport and Works Act and hybrid bills, where the public benefit would clearly outweigh the loss or deterioration of habitat.<\/p>\n
Abi Bunker, director of Conservation at the Woodland Trust said: \u201cIt is\u00a0heartbreaking\u00a0to see that one year on from the ground-breaking changes to the NPPF, there are still too many councils and developers across England that are not implementing the level of protection it affords to ancient woods and trees. We can and must do better than this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“Some local authorities are doing this really well and should be applauded, but we need all planning authorities and developers to fully implement the changes and secure our remaining ancient trees and woodlands for future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Woodland Trust in \u00a31.5m collaboration with Natural England<\/h4>\n
The Woodland Trust was awarded \u00a3210,000 from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) as part of a \u00a31.5 million collaboration with Natural England to update the Ancient Woodland Inventory (AWI) to make sure the legislation works properly.<\/p>\n
At this stage, the\u00a0Woodland Trust has written to the head of local authorities across England and enclosing\u00a0a copy of its revised Planners\u2019 Manual.\u00a0 The document sets out good practice and policy making to aid\u00a0local authorities when making key decisions for woods and trees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Woodland Trust\u00a0has raised concerns that in some areas,\u00a0local planners are\u00a0still not safeguarding ancient woodland and trees in line with the changes made to the\u00a0National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)\u00a0in July 2019. Woodland Trust has been pushing for changes for 20 years The Woodland Trust has been lobbying for over two decades to have these changes… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":5025494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,6],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025493"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5025493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5025494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5025493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5025493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5025493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}