Action Briefing Dec 2002 - Jan 2003
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Planning for Birmingham

The UDP Public Enquiry

The Unitary Development Plan (UDP) Inquiry opened on 5th November (remember!), and so far, we’ve attended 5 or so sessions. These covered the Environment and Economy chapters and we spoke specifically on the removal of land from the Green Belt, the protection of natural sites and the new waste chapter.

The Council welcomed and adopted some of our proposed changes to prevent sites of nature value being trashed so as to allow development. They were rather less welcoming of our attempts to correct the frankly incredible bias towards incineration and against recycling, but conceded some of these points. On the Green Belt, the inspectors conducted a very careful and detailed examination of the evidence we presented, and took copious notes - at this stage, it is impossible to tell what the outcome of their deliberations will be, the final inspectors’ report will not be published till a couple of months into the new year.

Meanwhile, the inquiry continues with futher sessions on individual areas of the city, including more Green Belt changes.

Andy Pryke

Transport
The transport session of the UDP enquiry concentrated on the areas of Aviation, Commuted Sum payments in lieu of parking provision in the City Centre and Park and Ride. The Council were out in force for this one outnumbering me by four to one but most of their representations were made by Chris Haynes, Transportation Dept.

There was a long debate about the sustainability of expanding Birmingham International Airport in which Chris Haynes essentially agreed with virtually everything I had to say about the unsustainablity of Aviation as a manner of transport, about the subsidies the industry recieves and the pollution it causes, but he would not accept that this was at odds with the concept of sustainable development. Bizarre!

The Commuted Sums in lieu of parking provision in the City Centre had been dropped from the UDP at the request of some developers who argued that it was at odds with PPG13. I believe I successfully argued that, with only minor changes, it could be brought back in line with PPG13 and needn’t be dropped wholesale. Chris Haynes did not agree this but did agree that some alternative Supplementary Planning Guidance would need to be written to replace it as the current UDP policy was not clear enough.

The Park and Ride debate centered around the issue of how well considered the Council’s policy on Park and Ride was with respect to whether it would actually generate more or less traffic. I think I won a few points in this one but we will have to await the referee’s decision.

Brett Rehling