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URBAN WHITE PAPER - DROWNING IN A SEA OF CARROTS

16 Nov 2000

Prescott ducks radical measures on housing and transport

Friends of the Earth today greeted John Prescott's Urban White Paper as full of carrots but with few sticks.

Key omissions from the White Paper include:

• VAT will be cut on housing conversions, but not introduced on new greenfield housing development.
• Councils are not to be required (only “encouraged”) to produce strategies for dealing with empty homes
• Workplace parking charging will not be extended to all private non-residential car parking
• There is no commitment to traffic calming or home zones in all residential areas

Tony Bosworth, Friends of the Earth's Transport Campaigner, said
“Mr Prescott's plan has so many incentives that councils and developers will be drowning in a sea of carrots. But these will only be partially effective without any real sticks. Mr Prescott's plans will help turn cities a greener shade of grey, and make them better places to live and work. But he has stopped short of taking the radical measures we need to promote brownfield housing and to tackle traffic.Without these, our urban areas will still be cities for cars and not cities for people”

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