The Green Party will seek to integrate environmental, social and economic objectives in all areas of countryside and rural policy.
Our long-term Policies for a Sustainable Society, which are created by Green Party members, cover the following:
- Revitalising the economy and life of rural communities:
- Ensuring food security, integrating human health and wellbeing, environmental protection, animal welfare and decent livelihoods for farmers, farm workers and growers
- Legislating to stop further destruction of wildlife habitats, the soil, the landscape, ancient monuments and our countryside heritage
- Ensuring better and more accessible public transport options for people living in the countryside.
We will:
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Increase delivery of housing and make it affordable to meet local needs.
We understand there is a housing crisis in the countryside with a lack of affordable homes, the Green Party recognises the need to ensure affordable housing options for rural communities.
The Green Party will build 500,000 social rented homes that will be built within the first five years, if we were to be in office. Furthermore, as a candidate of the Green Party I would work towards establishing a Rural Housing Agency which would keep under review the needs of people working in rural areas who might not be able to access homes through traditional existing routes.
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Support local aspirations by introducing a community right of appeal against speculative development which conflicts with agreed local or neighbourhood plans.
The Green Party will reverse the presumption in favour of development and make sure developers cannot destroy unique habitats by ‘offsetting’ elsewhere.
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Prioritize smarter transportation choices (better public transportation networks).
The Green Party is committed to bringing rail services back into public ownership and control, as well as allowing local authorities to plan and run local services. Our long-term aim, as part of our Policies for a Sustainable Society, is to make sure that all rural areas are not neglected as well as help to develop networks of community and public transport to provide regular links to onward transport networks. The costs of delivery of a rural transportation system may be higher than in urban areas; therefore, the Green Party would aim to increase the Rural Transport Grant to a level that allows for this.
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Ensure that new energy infrastructure minimises local impacts through incentivising renewable energy.
The Green Party is fully committed to a fossil free society and would direct focus towards renewable energies. We would ensure that our non-renewable energy consumption would be halved by 2030. Furthermore, the Green Party is wholly against fracking and if elected we would do our best to ensure that facking is not further explored as an option for energy consumption.
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Promoting the resilience of the food and farming system by strengthening polices to protect the best farmland from development.
Green Party Policies for a Sustainable Society discourages the amalgamation of farms and supports family farms. We aim to improve access to land for people who are new to farming and horticulture. We support the sustainable diversification of agricultural land.
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Enhancing people’s experience of the countryside, by committing to monitoring rural tranquillity and dark skies and strengthen polices to improve them.
A further long-term aim of the Green Party is to introduce legislation to halt and reverse the spread of light pollution in the countryside in order to protect the dark night sky and to minimise disturbance to wildlife from artificial light.
How would you improve life in the countryside?
