CPRE Sussex Election Manifesto: planning for climate, nature, affordability

Ahead of the general election, we want to see candidates and parties prioritise polices that:

• Tackle climate breakdown by committing to renewable energy sources, ending reliance on fossil fuels and opposing airport and road expansion, and support Sussex to adapt to the unavoidable impacts.
• Protect nature and natural landscapes, by supporting nature-friendly farming, and properly funding protected National Landscapes and Nature Recovery Networks.
• Make genuinely affordable housing a reality, by requiring more affordable housing in developments, abolishing ‘hope value’ to help local authorities build social housing, backing communities to use neighbourhood planning or rural exception sites to deliver small-scale affordable housing developments, and taking the house price pressure off the South East with a regional economic development strategy for England.
• Plan intelligently to get the right development in the right places, while protecting the things that make Sussex special, with planning reform and a land use strategy that promotes brownfield development first, abolishes the ‘Standard Method’ for setting housing targets, puts local voices at its heart, and supports nature recovery, such as hedgerow planting.

In our full Manifesto 2024 we set out the policies that will help deliver this in greater detail.

You can use our letter-writing tool to ask your newly-elected MP to back the countryside:

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/contact-your-new-mp