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Protecting Shropshire

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Letter published in Shropshire Star, 8 January 2010

Ben Bentley (Shropshire Star 2 January) laments the decline of rural life. He is right. The last decade has seen too many villages stripped of their shops, pubs and post offices. At the same time house prices have soared out of reach of almost everyone who works in the rural economy.

Fortunately all is not lost. The last ten years have been a wakeup call. At long last the government and local councils have recognised that the countryside and its communities are in need of urgent protection.

Policy makers, politicians and rural communities must now act quickly to renew our countryside. National planning guidance issued on 27 December is designed to strengthen rural businesses and shops, but this will only happen if politicians and planners take the guidance to heart. Shropshire Council’s emerging Core Strategy also offers help to Shropshire’s rural areas, but it will only do so if planners and council officials invest enough effort in making it work.

Rural communities have an equal role. They need to make use of their ailing shops and pubs, and take them over as community ventures if necessary. They need to agree to affordable rural housing being built in small groups of dwellings tucked into the villages and hamlets of our hills and valleys. This will allow houses to be built where they are needed, and where they do not threaten the beauty and tranquillity of Shropshire’s unique countryside.

It is time for Shropshire’s countryside to become a landscape of revival, not of decline. This revival will only happen if communities, officials, councillors and politicians will it to happen. We can achieve a reversal of the fortunes of the countryside and its communities, and we must.

Andy Boddington
Vice Chairman
CPRE Shropshire