An angry campaigner said Labour is “literally bulldozing through red tape and bulldozing through nature and democracy.”
Rayner has been accused of tearing apart the countryside (Image: Getty)
Angela Rayner has been accused of “tearing up the countryside” with her plan to force through new prisons near rural communities.
The Deputy PM and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has unveiled plans to build four new prisons within the next seven years.
New laws will enable the Ministry of Justice to bypass councils to cut out lengthy planning applications and speed up the project.
But this has sparked anger among some in rural communities who fear that green belt land will be threatened.
Rosie Pearson, a planning expert and the co-founder of the Community Planning Alliance, said: “The green belt will not be safe, whatever caveats the Government say they have put in place.”
The UK is running out of prison spaces (Image: Getty)
“It’s the biggest risk to the countryside since the 1930s. Nothing is safe. It’s tearing up the rule book and putting nature, countryside and communities at huge risk, to chase relentless growth.
“It’s housing, data centres, solar farms, prisons… soon it’ll be pylons. It is literally bulldozing through red tape and bulldozing through nature and democracy.”
Labour wants to build more prisons to address the shortage of prison spaces in the UK.
Ms Rayner has said she is determined to break the “chokehold” that NIMBYs (meaning ‘not in my backyard’, a term that refers to people opposed to new developments) have on planning applications, adding they will “no longer have the upper hand.”
Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, added: “Part of our plan for change, this capacity strategy, alongside an independent review of sentencing policy, will keep our streets safe and ensure no government runs out of prison places again.”
Shabana Mahmood visiting a prison earlier this year (Image: AP)
The Ministry of Justice has vowed to create 14,000 more prison places by 2031. The prison population in the UK is currently 86,000, but it is expected to rise by 3,000 each year.
Despite the four new prisons, Justice Secretary Mahmood admitted to Sky News that the prison system will still run out of places by 2031 because many cells will require health and safety enhancements.
She said that “every single year we lose some cells to dilapidation, for which we do maintenance works.”
Ms Mahmood said there will be 96,000 useable prison spaces by 2031, but by this point, the prison population will exceed 100,000.
The Justice Secretary said the Government will conduct a sentencing review in order to “do things differently in this country” and make sure that “there’s always a prison place available for people that have to be locked up for reasons of public protection”.
