Friends of the Earth North East

Take action

Help Shape the Future of Your Local Community

Picture the scene. It's the summer of 2010 and you're enjoying a lazy summer's day in your back garden with a copy of the local paper. Everything is perfect until your eyes descend on the paper's headline, 'Local park to be sacrificed for new housing'. Horrified, you flick through the rest of the paper. On page 5, it gets worse. 'Council gives go-ahead to new incinerator' it reads. In your rage, you leap off your hammock and race indoors to ring the Council. 'I'm sorry', they tell you, 'but both the incinerator and the new housing are in our Local Development Framework, which is following the policies laid down in the Regional Spatial Strategy.' 'But they're going to destroy the area. It's all wrong,' you protest. 'Well,' sighs the council officer, 'That's as may be, but it's too late to do anything about it now. You should have made your views known when these documents were being written.'

And the moral of the story: if you care about what happens in your local area and in the North East as a whole, you really do need to engage with the regional and local planning system. The Government has recently made some important changes to the system, and it is important for anyone who cares about where they live to get involved with it. By the time a damaging proposal comes on the table which is consistent with local and regional planning documents, it will be too late to do anything about it.

Friends of the Earth has produced some briefings to explain the new system and how you can get involved with it. These can be found here.

To find out how to get involved with planning in your local are, contact your local council and ask to be sent information about the Local Development Framework and be added to the mailing list.

Take Action on Climate Change

Friends of the Earth has launched a new Climate Change campaign, The Big Ask, which is aiming to get a new Bill through Parliament which would commit the Government to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 3% a year. Year-on-year targets are essential to ensure that we meet the targets the Government has set for a 60% reduction by 2050 and will enable business and society to adjust gradually to a low-carbon way of living.

To get this Bill through Parliament, we need as many people as possible to contact their MP asking them to support it.

Climate Change is already happening, and without immediate action, it threatens to destroy our and future generations quality of life. Please support our climate change campaign by visiting www.thebigask.com.