Threats to the undisturbed countryside

Our new maps show the spread of noise and visual intrusion from urban and industrial infrastructure including housing, roads, airports power lines and power stations, including windfarms. These developments not only ‘take’ undeveloped land but project their ‘shadow’ across the countryside around. While on some estimates about 11% of England is built on, the intrusion maps show the influence of that 11% spreads far and wide disturbing 50% of the country, with no signs of the threats diminishing.

The major threats are explored below:

New buildings and infrastructure
New housing uses up more countryside than any other kind of infrastructure. Brownfield land is available for building over 1 million homes, and new sites come up constantly, but greenfield sites in the countryside are favoured by developers. Recycling land enables vital regeneration to make towns and cities more attractive and vibrant places to live and for those already living there as well. Yet, a quarter of all new homes are still built on green fields.
> Our brownfield campaign

New roads
Government has set aside billions of pounds to build new roads or increase the capacity of others. Roads and road traffic cut through open countryside shattering its calm, damaging landscapes, habitats and disturbing wildlife. New roads are planned even for our most protected and cherished landscapes in the National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs).
> Our roads campaign

More planes and runways
Government’s current policy favours a huge increase in airport capacity to service the insatiable demand for air travel. New runways have been proposed for Stansted and Heathrow threatening thousands of homes with demolition and with overflying of thousands more. Air traffic in the UK has trebled over the past 20 years and is forecast to continue to grow at 4-5% each year in future. Air traffic will need new corridors to cope with the growth and these will intrude further into our national parks and other tranquil protected landscapes.
> Our aviation campaign