Environmental pressure groups in Brighton & Hove are keen to see many areas that do not conform to the criteria for a National Park included anyway to act as a buffer zone to keep development at bay. The 1949 National Park & Access to the Countryside Act does not allow for areas of poor landscape quality to be included simply to act as buffer zones and the latest planning policy statement (PPS22 would appear to confirm that the government are not prepared to countenance limiting development in areas just because they border a national park.

The government may be taking this hard line because its push for renewable energy developments is a special case and it has instructed regional development agencies to adopt positive policies on wind farms. Nevertheless the general principle that buffer zones are not sacrosanct could have implications for a variety of sites around Brighton & Hove, not least of which Toad’s Hole Valley which is our premier greenfield site for jobs and homes (see earlier stories in the KnowledgeBase)

* The UK has 82 existing wind farms with over 1000 turbines producing 600 MW of electricity, which is enough to power one large city. The government has indicated that it expects 8,000MW to be generated by 2010. An application has already been lodged for permission to build a 27 turbine wind farm on the edge of the Lake District National Park.