GOVERNMENT proposals to free-up the rural planning system to allow for more affordable homes and the expansion of rural business have met with a mixed response from different countryside bodies.

The report, issued yesterday (March 25) says that rural planners should set aside “exception” sites which can be developed for low cost housing after the West Country MP Matthew Taylor reported that hundreds of villages were in danger of dying as communities because of the influx of wealthy second home owners and holiday home operators.

It is an argument that has been raging in areas like the Yorkshire Dales for two decades because – as Mr Taylor says – when local people are forced out, there are no children to keep the local school open and few customers for the local shop and pub.

The Government response means that, in future, local planners will be able to overrule objections to new cheap housing and the expansion of rural businesses.

The latter proposal] delighted the Country Land and Business Association, which said the new plans were “a shot in the arm for the rural economy.” But the Campaign to Protect Rural England called for new building and business expansion must be handled with extreme care – “the countryside must not be sacrificed to economic expansion.”

The new system will be received with deep concern in the Craven area of the Yorkshire Dales because the part of the district within the national park has rarely allowed new housing projects, which means that the area outside the park has already seen massive expansion.

Skipton, the area’s major town, is being asked to find space for hundreds more homes but there have already been mass protests by local residents who fear that the community is losing its traditional market town character.

• The full Government report can be seen at www.communities.gov.uk/news