Pembrokeshire National Park declares War, Tax on rural businesses and farms

I am someone who believes passionately in the concept of National Parks.

However I believe they should stick to what they do best, and steer clear of what they do very badly.

In times of economic pain it is desperately sad to see unelected authorities giving themselves powers to tear into rural businesses but that is what has just happened here in Pembrokeshire.

This month the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority quietly introduced one of the most draconian measures possible under the guise of an apparent interest in increasing affordable housing provision in the Parks.

I don't know if you're familiar with our area and Britain's most densely populated Park. It is in the most part a sliver of a Park lining the coast and inland waterways of the county. Most of its beautiful landscape was created by human activity over thousands of years. That activity gave rise to communities and towns that in turn supported the land around them.

However, on 30th March the Authority passed for themselves the right to incur a new tax on land and redundant farm buildings permitted for residential development. This tax would be an attempt to extract hundreds of thousands of pounds by an Authority with no democratic mandate. The money raised would be put towards an ill-defined fund for increasing affordable housing in an ill-defined area by an ill defined mechanism.

So, if my brother -  an organic farmer and founder director of the successful Welsh milk cooperative Calon Wen - seeks planning permission on a plot of land or old farm building for residential development to raise money to invest in his farm, he will now be expected to pay anything upwards of £30,000 in a tax to the planners.

Meanwhile if farmer 'Bob' across the lane (outside the Parks) needs to do the same, no such tax will be incurred because he is outside the Park. As you may know this National Park is no wilderness (the most densely populated Park, remember)  so this astonishingly crippling discriminatory tax structure will be replicated throughout dozens of communities. You are familiar enough with rural economics to comprehend how the law of unintended consequences will accelerate this market distortion through communities within the Parks.

Fundamentally, an authority without democratic mandate has just given itself power to tax farmers and small businesses in the Parks, killing investment. Because the inspector requires a review in 4 years few owners of land will submit to this daft tax, so killing investment stone dead in rural areas, hardest hit by recession and the withdrawal of services, at a time when investment could revive our fortunes.

To add insult to injury there is a get out clause for land or barns sold to be turned into self catering holiday accommodation. No tax will be imposed there so an incentive to build more empty homes for tourists in the heart of our communities has been created. Those of us who want to see living communities won't fancy our choices.

No one has noticed this massive new burden on Parks communities. Few care possibly. But imagine if residents on one side of a Cardiff street were told to pay a tax of £20,000 to an unelected authority whilst the Jones opposite were not. It isn't hard to imagine what would happen.

The planners when challenged will adopt a righteous look of hurt and declare they are just trying to do their best to provide affordable housing and reduce the cost of buying plots in the Parks. Make no mistake, those of us who are familiar with this Authority know full well they have no interest in affordable housing, nor any statutory duty to provide it. Worse still they have few of the skills within the Authority to understand the relationship between rural business and housing in our communities.

They are required to carry out statutory duties (to conserve and enhance the natural beauty etc etc) and have NO statutory duty (contrary to what they claim on their website)  but merely a requirement to "seek" to foster social and economic well being. They have fought very hard not to be required by statute to care about our social and economic wellbeing.

Odd then how they've embraced with such passion a 'social' measure that will destroy economic activity in the Parks and fail in its primary aim. Accident or design? You decide.



Extract of National Parks Act 1949:

A National Park authority, in pursuing in relation to the National Park the purposes specified in subsection (1) of section five of this Act, shall seek to foster the economic and social well-being of local communities within the National Park, but without incurring significant expenditure in doing so...

Is Voting Yes! a Vote for the Taffia?

There seems to be little excitement over the upcoming Referendum on legislative powers in the Welsh Assembly. Hardly surprising.. I nearly got bored and walked away just writing the last sentence.

However the referendum does raise one massive issue in Wales that just won't go away. How Welsh should Wales be?

Wise "Yes" campaigners are aware that even the perception that this vote is being hijacked by the so-called 'Taffia' (a term muttered in hushed tones in the English-speaking enclaves of the Principality) will make many switch off.

This response finds its roots in the widely held belief that Wales has over played the Welsh thing. This isn't simply a gripe about the Welsh language. It's a complaint that a small minority has used legislation and European cash to infer upon Wales a greater title of Nationhood and cultural identity than actually exists.  But most importantly the fear is that this is done to favour the same minority.

Everyone will have their opinions on this, I'm certain.  For those of us born in Wales but coming from South Pembrokeshire the issue is a finely balanced one. We are largely an English speaking mixed race drawn from Welsh Wales, England, Flemish lands and Solihull. But we are Welsh, aren't we? Aren't we?

Can we count to ten in Welsh? Probably (though 6 always gets me). Do we choose to educate our kids in Welsh? Possibly (though don't get me started on this one). Who do we support in the rugby? Oh come on, seriously? (Although can someone teach Andy Powell some new tricks).

When asked what nationality we are, many of us will say 'Welsh' before 'British' (especially in Dublin around closing time), and always did long before Welsh Nationalism was a mainstream movement. So why do we feel a nagging sense that Wales PLC is drifting away from us?

Well, partly this is because we live in a time of Plaid ascendancy. The coalition deal has certainly brought much of their flavour of Welshness to the fore. It's also a time (or was) of extravagant European spending that has funded a cultural shopping spree. And then there's the Grand Slam effect.

The appointment of WRU chief Roger Lewis to head up the Yes Campaign was a cute one indeed. This plugged directly into the Grand Slam DNA that floats mostly homeless around a Welshman's disappointed psyche. "Yes!" the campaigners said "rugby is the thing wherein you'll catch the conscience of the voter." When Lee Byrne cuts the English defence to shreds no one asks if he speaks Welsh before deciding to pass out with joy. When Stephen Jones gathers his man of the match trinket and chatters away in Welsh, no one says he got the prize because he's one of "them". Rugby seems to the Welsh nation to exist outside intra cultural prejudice. So, Mr Lewis's presence reassures us that the Assembly must therefore be the same.

But this move also reveals a huge flaw in our national mental state. If we could make Shane Williams a Welsh leader we probably would. It would serve no purpose for the improvement of a nation's prospects but when times were hard we could at least play clips of him dancing around those stodgy english arms and forget all the misery. We choose to confuse our nation's political fate with our perennial passion. And that means the important decisions don't get put up for proper scrutiny. 

Many will have seen the Roger Lewis appointment for what it was and hardened their resolve to ignore the campaigns that appear to rage solely on Twitter. They continue to be suspicious of what they see as a radicalisation of our State. And that is sad because they're offered so much more than that and they just don't know it.

At the launch of Yes For Wales in Pembrokeshire last week a call was made not to allow the Yes Vote to be hijacked by the Taffia (I paraphrase). However the main fear was apathy. A low turn out, even one in favour of more powers would mean a lack of true mandate. All true I think. 

And yet a vote for more powers is not a vote for the Taffia. It's a vote for powers in a Legislature that - whatever you think about it - is YOURS and has material impact on YOUR life, your schools, your health service. If you get that and you get off your backside and vote, then you can think of it as the appetiser. because come May you can tuck into the main course. Vote then in the Assembly elections and before you know it you'll get leaders who represent the nation, its diversity and maybe even you!


And Roger Lewis is on the money in one key respect. Give those policitians in Cardiff more powers, he says, and they'll stop winging it's all someone else's fault. 

Again I paraphrase. But he's right. 

It's official - Local planners are not up to the job (in a nice way)

Interesting list of recommendations coming from the WAG's Sustainability Committee this week.

It was tasked to dig into the planning system in Wales to see how it was performing. Evidence was called from across the board from developers through to Local Government, the Design Commission through to planners themselves.

The recommendations can be read in full here .

From our (selfish) perspective, we put the spotlight on key recommendations that should be heeded by planners in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority.
 
We were interested to note the conclusion that there is a real lack of technical ability among local planning officers to do their job, something we here in Pembrokeshire National Park have been
describing (perhaps ungenerously) as incompetence up until now.

Important too that (Recommendation 7) it should be made more explicit how planners policies "are expected to contribute to the delivery of the Economic Renewal Programme". This is an important message to PCNPA planners for whom our economic well being is an afterthought (admittedly through no fault of their own).

A key recommendation 23 stresses the importance of a robust evidence base for housing need... which I read as "if you want 50 affordable homes you're going to have prove they're needed".

Note also (Recommedation 19)  the plea that planners should focus on Welsh Assembly advice and not charge off on their own agendas. Now, this sounds familiar when you look at the activities of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Their recent draft planning guidance or SPG that would have material influence on members' planning decisions has already been widely criticised for going well off track.

I quote: "Some witnesses told us that the use of Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) was being misused by local planning authorities to introduce local policies without sufficient scrutiny." This is so true. WAG has been very good on developing policy that nurtures rural business and fosters sustainable development. As far as we can tell the PCNPA is taking IT'S policy in an almost totally opposite direction.

Anyway, all good stuff on paper. Time now to see how the government responds and whether this filters down to the grassroots.... I WILL hold my breath.

Any views?

Blind Devotion

You'll get the gist quite quickly of what we think about the way the Assembly is taking our National Parks.

For the record we love being designated as a National Park. It does untold good for our local economy through tourism. This is just as well of course since traditional rural businesses like farming just don't support the number of people living here that they used to.

A common mistake politicians make though is to think that our countryside is the way it is because it is a National Park. No. It's always been like this, formed by farmers, landowners and the ebb and flow of humanity and commerce over thousands of years.

But the problem with National Parks is that we have the American concept stuck in our minds. That is a gallumphing great wilderness of nothing but beauty, bears and the odd winnebago weaving by. It just ain't like that. Pembrokeshire National Park is the most densely populated Park in the UK, studded with villages and even the odd town, fringed by oil giants, intersected by a busy waterway. In short it is full of people busy doing stuff.

Which is exactly why the National Park Planning Authority needs to recognise that fact. Our communities full of dynamic, busy people need to be protected and supported as much as the puffin, chough or bat. Fortunately, people can help themselves so you won't be needing to set up a web cam and exclusion zone around us so that we can breed in peace. All you'll need to do is ensure our businesses and communities have the same opportunities to grow and prosper as those a few hundred yards outside the notional line drawn up all those years ago.

Not much to ask I know. But you'd be surprised. A motion was put forward this week in the Senedd that sought to make it a duty of National Parks to support social and economic development within their boundaries. (Assembly Record Motion NDM4632 ). They made a good case and I certainly agree that if we are to have a National Park Authority in charge of our planning that we can take seriously then this is vital.

Sadly though the government saw things differently and anyway the debate focussed instead on the idea of improving democratic representation on the Park's Authority... also something we desperately need of course.

What was revealing in the debate however was the blind devotion the Minister who is responsible for Parks in Wales, Jane Davidson has to the National Parks as they are. "We strongly rely on the parks with regard to our sustainable development agenda, which is economic, social and environmental."

This from a minister who has encouraged the National Park Authority to pursue planning controls that would make sustainable building economically unviable. The latest Planning Guidance the Authority is hoping to dupe members to vote for concerns affordable housing.

Headline proposals include charging a £30,000 fee to anyone wishing to build their home in the Parks and insisting that high levels of affordable housing be built on developments regardless of evidence of local need... and when builders say this burden is too great to make quality building viable, the policy seeks to tell them "build cheaper, mate and stuff the sustainability!" I paraphrase but you get the gist.

The policy will if adopted suck economic value out of rural businesses based in the Park while neighbours a few hundred yards away have no such restrictions. Why? I don't know. They have never proved that there is a more acute problem with affordable housing in our neck of the woods.

Jane Davidson has protected the Pembrokeshire National Park Authority in the face of some pretty devastating criticism of its performance over the last few years. She has protected its budgets in the face of recent cuts... it must be getting the message that it can do no wrong in the eyes of the minister. Not a healthy environment in which to foster its own much needed improved performance.

Whatever happens, we are getting the distinct impression the Minister would like to halt all social and economic development in the Parks... perhaps she's gone all misty eyed and her mind has wandered to thoughts of Yosemite or Yellowstone.

Have any thoughts? Let me know.