Your countryside feels the pain
DEFRA will cut resource spending by 29% capital spending by 34% and its administration budget by 33%.
They will do this by:
- Getting the farming industry to share the responsibility and cost of disease control.
- Turning British Waterways into a charity.
- Reducing administrative staff, which will hit farmers who are already critical about late payments.
- Cutting programmes to reduce the amount of bio waste sent to landfill.
- The Environmental Agency has seen £66m in cuts for environmental schemes.
- Reducing the size and cost of its estate, including a sell off 1.85 million acres (18% of England’s woodlands) of the Forestry Commission for £250m. Including Eggesford where the Forestry Commission was born and Haldon Forest Park. Defra now says it will consult the public over sales later this year.
- Allan MacKenzie the secretary of the Forestry Commission Trade Unions said, “Once we've sold it, it never comes back. … restrictions are placed on the land...public don’t get the same access to the land and facilities.
- A sale would open the way to commercial exploitation with the development of holiday villages, golf courses and commercial logging operations.
- Natural England ‘s budgeted income has been reduced by £7.4m Some national nature reserves (NNRs) could be sold to charities and businesses it could affect any of these nine reserves in Devon. Axmouth to Lyme Regis undercliffs, Berry Head, Sharkham Point, Black-a-Tor Copse, Dawlish Warren, Dendles Wood, Dunsdon Farm, East Dartmoor, Slapton Ley, Wistman's Wood.
- Caroline Lucas MP said, …”It would be an unforgivable act of vandalism. Rather than asset stripping our natural heritage, government should be preserving public access to it.”
- Stephanie Hilborne of The Wildlife Trusts said “Transfer of land should not take place before a clear policy has been established.”
