Well, how about Friends of the Earth, The National Trust, The Wildlife Trusts, The Woodland Trust … the list is huge. So what on earth is Britains’ “Greenest Government Ever” doing wrong?

I’m on the Planning Committee for Kendal Town Council, and on their behalf I’ve been working my way through the document which has caused all the fuss – the Draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). And, indeed, the ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ is all over the document. But the more I read, the more uneasy I became. And now I think I have discovered the reason.

The draft starts off impeccably by citing the definition of sustainable development in The Report of the Brundtland Commission, “Our Common Future”, published in 1987:

Sustainable development means development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

What this means in practice within the UK was agreed jointly in Five Principles published in March 2005, under the auspices of the Sustainable Development Commission (abolished by the new Government … hmm, maybe a warning there).

It in instructive to compare these Five Principles with the definitions in Paragraph 10 of the NPPF (“For the planning system delivering sustainable development means:”)

I have used italics to highlight what I think are significant differences between the Five Principles, and the draft NPPF’s take on sustainable development. I think these go a long way to explain why the draft has got it wrong:

• it requires an increasing supply of land for housing and for economic growth (for ever? at least 15 years – Para.24) – is that sustainable? and how will people on low incomes have an equal opportunity to live in one of these homes?
• it completely ignores the principle of Polluter Pays – indeed, the whole tone of the document is to try and prevent any such considerations preventing building going ahead (e.g. Para 64, 70, 73, …)
• governance: although communities who want to prepare their own Neighbourhood Plans are required to hold a local referendum, these plans are not allowed to set lower targets than the higher level Local Plans. In our part of the world the Local Plan attracted furious opposition and would never pass a local referendum
• the draft NPPF explicitly sets out to tear up “sound science” – the learnings of the post-war years, embodied in current planning policies

I could go on, but if the Framework is built on a presumption in favour of sustainable development, and it has redefined sustainable development to meet its own preconceptions, then it’s not surprising it’s been the focus of so much opposition.

One final thought – the draft NPPF (para 53) says the purpose of development management is:

The primary objective of development management is to foster the delivery of sustainable development, not to hinder or prevent development

If it was serious about sustainable development, I believe this should be:

The primary objective of development management is to foster the delivery of sustainable development and prevent unsustainable development

A small change, but it creates a balance which is conspicuously lacking throughout the draft.

For this reason, over the past years I have got into the habit of wearing a white ‘peace poppy’ rather than the more conventional red poppy. I believe the only way to acknowledge the full horror of war is to remember all victims of war equally, civilian as well as military, and wearing a peace poppy is for me the best way to do this. I have no ‘problem’ with red poppies – e.g. if I attend a ceremony at a war memorial specifically to remember military fatalities, I will wear a red poppy. But an authentic Remembrance Day must be for remembering everyone – members of the armed forces killed in combat certainly, but also civilians mowed down in snowy forests in the middle of the night, or incinerated in a nuclear blast, or gassed in the death chambers, or blown up by a suicide bomber in a crowded marketplace…

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we must remember them all.

Peace poppies can usually be bought from your local Justice and Peace Group

As the cyclists started the climb out of Kendal, heading south to Garstang, I hope they stopped to admire the brand new addition to the town’s signage – a plaque celebrating Kendal’s status as Cumbria’s First Fairtrade Town, and also now a Transition Town. The Town Council had been a bit worried that the addition might make the signs look a bit cluttered, but agreed to try one sign in time for the cycle ride. I’ll attempt to persuade them on Monday that the trial sign is a success, and the other signs should have the plaque too.

Why the change? I argued in Council in September that the Fairtrade and Transition initiatives had already been supported by the Council. The standards are internationally recognised, and are independently audited and are not easy to achieve. The signs celebrate the achievement of local groups in meeting these standards; they encourage Kendalians to find out more and support the groups; and also promote Kendal’s ‘brand’ to visitors – they show Kendalians are active in key issues like climate change and trade justice.

Good value for a small expenditure on signwriting

In just over 2 weeks’ time Kendal will be hosting one of Europe’s leading street arts festivals – Mintfest. Mintfest is unquestionably Cumbria’s leading international festival in terms of its artists/performers, its audiences, its industry profile (it is now the UK’s showcase festival which has moved from Manchester to Kendal this year) and its reputation within the street arts field.

From 29 August there will be more than 150 artists in the Town with more than a third from Europe and further afield and there will be around 100+ international promoters, directors and professionals from the street arts and festivals field.

The key is Mintfest offers “great art for everyone” and it is the envy of many towns and cities across the UK and after only 4 years!

After looking at the web page here, and downloading the programme from here, I’m inclined to agree that this looks like an extraordinary event in the making.

And we thought that moving away from Edinburgh meant the end of festivals for us…

The main Council Meeting had a presentation on future plans for Kendal Museum, which is looking for funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund to give the Museum a complete makeover. There was also a request to make a currently unused building on the site available to The Mountain Film Company, who run the mountain film competition during the the Kendal Mountain Festival. The Town Council has an interest, as councillors are also ex-officio trustees of the charity which owns the site.

By the end of the meeting I was interested to discover that councillors are ex-officio trustees of a total of three local charities: Dowker Bindloss, Schools of Science and Art, and the Allen Institute and Museum. In most cases I would expect the aims of these charities would coincide with those of the Council, but it will be interesting to see how councillors manage to juggle their different hats should a conflict of interest arise.

One final note on the environment front – the Council has officially replied to the SLDC’s Air Quality Progress Report 2010. Having read the report and the ‘Action Plan’, I personally feel that the words ‘Progress’ and ‘Action’ are wildly optimistic. Take this glorious non-sequitur issued in March and then repeated in June:

South Lakeland District Council (SLDC) has launched a consultation with affected residents on whether the council should widen the existing Air Quality Management Area (AQMA).

The existing area currently includes Lowther Street but recent monitoring shows targets for Nitrogen Dioxide levels will not be met in the street or in traffic hotspots across the town.
…
By including an enlarged area it’s hoped levels of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) from traffic will be reduced making our air cleaner and healthier.

My emphasis – it’s good to see the quality of the air we breathe is in safe hands.

It would be easy to see this as the two extremes of the green agenda. SLACC/TT worries about the two life / civilisation threatening issues of climate change and peak oil; SLDC worries about recycling plastics and card from remote Cumbrian farms and villages – and litter (especially dog poo). There are of course areas of overlap – Clare had just visited an eco-school, which I’m sure SLACC/TT would endorse equally enthusiastically.

Pressure groups exist to form public opinion, and then elected bodies respond to the wishes of their constituents. Pressure groups will of course try to short-circuit the process and influence the elected bodies directly, and it is arguable that elected representatives have a leadership role too. However, after knocking on lots of doors during the recent election campaign, I did hear a lot about dog poo, but very little about climate change. The challenge for councillors who share SLACC/TT’s convictions will be to help them get the message across to ordinary Kendalians.

The owner and the architect had obviously studied the Green Building Bible and taken it to heart. From a “green” perspective the new design had everything, from its re-used brickwork, its low carbon footprint timber, its Thermafleece (local sheeps’ wool) insulation, its use of natural daylight, to its flat sedum roof. The porch was literally in the back garden of the property, and not visible from any public road. The ideal place you might think to experiment with how well “green” building could be blended with a traditional Kendal property.

However, on the other side stood the barrier of being in a conservation area, where there is a rigid policy of not just replacing like with like, but even replacing like with original to correct “mistakes” in the past. For example, people living in property with uPVC windows will not be given permission to replace them with uPVC, if the property traditionally had timber windows.

There was a lively debate, which came to a vote – quite unusual. For the record, the conservationist line won, and the application was recommended for refusal when it comes in front of SLDC. Kendal may be officially a Transition Town, but the transition to green building faces an uphill struggle.

Tuesday evening saw a training session for new councillors on the Code of Conduct under which we operate. Maybe we are supposed to be so overwhelmed with the funds at the Councils’ disposal that we may be tempted to pour it into the laps of friends and family (or should that be LAPs?). I’m still trying to get my head round the difference between personal and prejudicial interests. Maybe if I just try to be open and honest and do the best for the general good of the ward and Kendal as a whole – that should be enough.

So it was with some interest that I went along to a meeting of the Kendal Neighbourhood Forum, a forum run by Cumbria County Council, the highest of the three levels of local government in this town. I am by instinct deeply suspicious of the flood of ‘consultation initiatives’ which have been launched in the UK – basically, the more pig-headed the government, the more they have wanted to ‘consult’ to convince people that they know best.

This Forum had a few presentations from various bodies, but it became apparent that the main reason why most people were there was the last item on the agenda. The Forum has real money to dish out to local community bodies, who had two minutes to pitch for funding. It was a bit like Dragons’ Den, but the dragons’ fires had been extinguished and their teeth removed. Various play groups, sports clubs, etc had their say and were granted amounts of between five hundred and a thousand pounds to help boost their existing fundraising for projects. As there was no restriction on the available pot, all the requests were duly approved by common acclaim.

It’s easy to be cynical about this. The seven grand or so dispensed tonight is not going to make much of a hole in Cumbria’s annual budget of around 350 million. The audience in the room were not likely to turn down requests. Putting all that to one side, it is true that the funds will make a difference to the community groups who receive them, and these groups are exactly the people the councils need to encourage if we are to build a greater ‘civic society’ in Kendal (not to confused with the Kendal Civic Society, who were co-incidentally one of the recipients of tonight’s largesse). In their various ways, these groups are indeed trying to be Good Samaritans. If this is one way they can extract money from ‘the system’ to help them, then good luck to them.

I asked the Guild’s Chair why the modern editions were twice the size of the originals. She told me that it was no longer possible to source linen thread as fine as that produced in 1769. There’s a lesson there somewhere.

If you’re visiting the Lake District this summer, do pop in – it’s free.