Northern Ireland Outdoors Forum - Hiking, camping and more
General => General Chat => Topic started by: Rich.H on October 22, 2014
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I will keep most of this to a short sweet copy and past type post as currently my rage levels are too high for civil typing on a public forum. That being said there is a bill in the early stages that is going to allow any and almost all forested type areas be sold off to private companies to be used how they see fit. If that single sentence alone isn't scary for folk you need some coffee to wake up.
The article is quite extensive and includes a few links with more in depth explanations as well as some documents, I would suggest taking time to actually read all of them properly as it really needs that kind of attention to take it all in and understand the potential impact. I'm not quite sure about the whole NI political situation with regards to how much power they have in Westminster but either way some noise needs to be made.
A quick snippet that I feel should give enough of a jolt to the importance of this then a link.
We have heard various arguments – forests and national parks can’t be included because they are not surplus, the only land being considered is brownfield, and only land held by arms-length bodies can be included. I’ll let anyone read Clause 21 (and Section 53A of it in particular) themselves and draw their own conclusions. The words surplus, brownfield, arms-length or any equivalent do not appear.
There is no exemption whatsoever for any public land (apart from Crown) contained within the Bill.
An oversight, poorly defined drafting that could easily be rectified, you’d think. If the Government says forests aren’t at risk of land transfer schemes, then why not amend the Bill to state that?
http://saveourwoods.co.uk/articles/infrastructure-bill/parliaments-new-chainsaw-the-infrastructure-bill/ (http://saveourwoods.co.uk/articles/infrastructure-bill/parliaments-new-chainsaw-the-infrastructure-bill/)