Action Briefing Oct 2003 - Nov 2003
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Local Groups' Conference 2003

Five of us headed for Leicester in September to attend Friends of the Earth's Local Groups' Conference, which involved lots of enthusiastic people getting passionate about everything from rail systems to global politics by day and equally passionate about real ale, salsa dancing and Polynesian carpet wrestling* by night. It’s definitely a work hard, play hard sort of affair.

The focus was the organisation's new direction. Happily for me, the new direction is exactly what has always most inspired and impressed me about Friends of the Earth: first, the way we treat single-issue campaigns (such as biodiversity loss, GM, transport etc.) as symptoms of a wider global problem (corporate globalisation) which needs fighting at both the global and local level; and secondly, the concept of environmental justice.

Environmental justice means stopping those who have least, from suffering most from the excessive lifestyles of those who have most. For example; people living with the pollution from factories that produce goods they cannot afford; people in Bangladesh suffering the floods from climate change caused by the UK, Europe and USA's pollution.

I attended some great workshops - in particular got all fired up by Hugh Ellis the Inspiring Planner (yes really, such a thing exists! see opposite), about planning and environmental justice, and found out about changes to the regional planning system; and went to a workshop on “Fenceline Communities” on Friends of the Earth's project in Teesside, where a group of local residents in a fenceline community are beginning to assert their rights to a better quality of life.

I won’t go into much depth, but just to give you a flavour, the local factories produce a “Friends and Neighbours Community Calendar” which has to be seen to be believed. It contains the dates of the weekly toxic alarm tests along with children’s pictures and smiley photos of the company managers. Safety advice, for when the alarm sounds unexpectedly, reads like those terrifying 1980s nuclear leaflets that said in the event of a nuclear explosion go into the house and stay there until the radioactivity goes away...

These alarms seem to be tested around twice a week. Friends and neighbours? I don’t think so. We need better regulation, better hotspot monitoring, training, and getting the Environment Agency to act with local people. Getting the EA to act at all, in some cases: there was one reported case where after some unauthorised emissions from factories, the EA responded to later questioning that they took no action because they did not want to “jeopardise the good will of the companies involved”.

Karen Leach

*Don’t ask. OK, if you really want to know, maybe we can fit a session into our next Christmas Party.

The Joys of Planning
This year's Local Group's Conference included an invaluable workshop on the new local planning system due to come into force next year.

The Government talks a lot about involving people in local democracy, but in reality it shudders at the thought of communities having legally enforceable rights to raise concerns and objections, mainly because these rights might interfere with Government's plans for vast growth in such areas as the South East. People can be "involved" and consulted all right, just so long as this involvement can be ignored. In short, the Treasury regards the planning system, rights and democracy as anti-competitive.

Most of the changes to the system will come under plan making. In the present system, Local Plans set out how an area should develop and the council makes decisions about individual planning applications. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill due to come into force in April 2004 will abolish all Local Plans and replace them with Local Development Frameworks (LDC).

Regional plans have new legal weight and are where major developments in your region will be decided. Although you have a right to be heard on local plans, you don't on regional plans. Given the new legal weight of these plans, Friends of the Earth will be focusing its efforts at the regional level.

We don't know exactly what opportunities there will be for public participation at regional level. But we do know that there will be no right to be heard at public examination of policy. Something called the Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) will be a key driver for what ends up in your LDC.

The new local planning system is a confusing one (even to experts), but one that we must nevertheless engage in and spread the message about rights, democracy and environmentally, sustainable development. Along with other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) we are still lobbying hard as the legislation goes through Parliament to extend communities' rights and give planning a real purpose.

Friends of the Earth is currently updating its planning website: visit www.foe.co.uk/resource/local/planning for the latest news and briefings.

James Botham with thanks to Hugh Ellis