3rd January 2006, 02:45 PM
Quote:quoteossibly (and I'm thinking aloud here) this is a little unfair on other developers, who are also basically making their money out of land use but have to pay for destruction of the heritage. Maybe farmers should have to apply for planning permission to farm any land, on anuual or perdiodic basis, and be subject to PPG16 conditions if there are any remains known or suspected on the land?
That would be very unfair on the farmers.
Developers only have to do this once, and then only when they are making a change in the use of land that would cause disturbance (e.g. taking farmland and putting houses on it). If permission is refused, no-one loses their job. Farmers generally are only continuing to do what has been done on that land for generations, and if you stop them they will become unemployed.
Where they are taking previously uncultivated land into arable production, then there are rules (and specific EIA regulations) that they need to go through to get permission.
No land-user of any kind that I know of has to apply for planning permission periodically; its once-and-for-all in most cases. There are circumstances like windfarms, where the permission lasts 25 years, and there is a planning condition requiring that the windfarm is dismantled after that time. I believe that the likely outcome is that in 24 years the windfarmers will apply for a new planning permission to keep the turbines.
What would be fairer would be to use one of the existing agri-environmental schemes, or create a new one, to help take land out of production (or change the type of production to a less damaging one). This is being done in parts of the country. Subsidy would be fair here, because you are depriving the farmers of income by preventing them from using the land in the most productive way.
1man1desk
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