Caroline Davison, the new planning and campaigns manager for Norfolk CPRE, at the Tiffey Valley, Wymondham. Picture: Denise Bradley

A planning expert has been recruited in the battle to defend Norfolk’s rural heritage from an unprecedented barrage of development. Rural affairs correspondent CHRIS HILL reports.

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When the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) founded its Norfolk branch in 1933, it faced a very different political landscape.

Back then, it busied itself dealing with the disappearance of hedgerows, the abandonment of old cottages and road-widening projects.

In later decades it gathered respect by championing the rural cause during the inquiry into Bacton Gas Terminal in the 1960s and in the battle to save Halvergate Marshes in the 1980s.

But CPRE leaders say there has never been a time when the county’s landscape was under greater attack than right now.

So much so, that the Norfolk branch has decided to appoint its first planning and campaigns manager to recruit the necessary expertise for its forthcoming fights.

The job has been given to Caroline Davison, who worked in Norfolk County Council’s planning department for more than 20 years.

And she said the greatest current threat was the joint core strategy (JCS) adopted by the Greater Norwich Development Partnership (GNDP) – a plan which allocates land for 37,000 new homes by 2026, mostly around the city’s rural hinterland.

During her work as a county conservation officer, Caroline contributed to the landscape assessments which partnership bosses said have helped make environment concerns a key part of the equation.

But now the self-confessed “poacher-turned-gamekeeper” said the house-building targets are too high to be absorbed within a rural county, and could exacerbate wider problems ranging from national planning reforms to energy infrastructure and water shortages.

She said: “The JCS is the biggest threat to the character of Norfolk and the area around Norwich for many years.

“One of our core policies is about protecting the tranquillity of the countryside and that could all be threatened by this influx of houses. Once it is gone, it is gone forever. There is this assumption that cities must continue growing and that we must continue building and building.

“But there has got to be a point where we say: ‘This city is big enough’, or else all the cities will eventually join up. We have to look at whether there is another way we can do this, otherwise there will not be any more countryside left.”

CPRE Norfolk chairman James Parry said: “The single biggest immediate threat to Norfolk is this overload of housing and in order to fight against that we needed to have a planning manager. If we go back five years we were concerned with wind turbines, but there was not what I would call a county-wide threat.

“We are focused on Norwich at the moment, but these arguments will be looked at over and over again. Who is to say we won’t get the same in King’s Lynn? We could end up with a whole necklace of urban and suburban sprawl going all around the county.”

The house-building ambitions of the Greater Norwich Development Partnership (GNDP) were vehemently defended by the group’s chairman, Broadland District Council leader Andrew Proctor.

“Describing the Joint Core Strategy as the ‘biggest threat to the countryside’ does not make sense,” he said. “Exactly the opposite is true. Without a JCS in place the area would be vulnerable to speculative development. What the JCS does is to set out the best way to manage growth and deliver much needed homes, jobs and infrastructure, whilst protecting the countryside from over-development.

“The JCS has taken account of all the possible brownfield options before greenfields were considered – these are the rules.

“However, you cannot deliver homes without building on some greenfield sites, as every building stands on what was once a greenfield site.”

Mr Proctor said the JCS is “heavily focused” on improving the environment for local people, and that about 40pc of the proposed “growth triangle” around Rackheath is planned as green space and corridors. He pointed out that growth point funding had already been used for a range of green projects including £250,000 on an education building in Catton Park, £120,000 on Whitlingham Park pathways, and £35,000 on improvements at Mousehold Heath.

He said future plans include a further £19m green investment, including projects at Bawburgh Lakes, the Broads buffer zone and Yare Valley.