The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE, formerly Council for the Preservation of Rural England ) is a voluntary anti-urbanist, pro-nature organisation.

They are one of the more powerful non-party groups in England, underlying cross-party agreements on preventing urban sprawl or ribbon development and have featured in campaigns of scepticism towards supposedly benign new technologies such as battery farming, GM foods and tall wind turbines and against insensitive profit-led coniferous plantations. Policies that they would tend to support would include afforestation using traditional broadleaved species, the Green Belt and the extension of national parks.

They are often perceived as more sympathetic to freeholders than tenants or travellers, and as defenders of the status quo against unproven change. In some villages their more vocal members tend to speak for residents - including commuters - rather than those trying to earn a living through business or agriculture, especially if that business appears rather untidy or operates at "unsocial hours". Despite their well informed stance on many complex issues they can therefore be characterised, perhaps unfairly, as proponents of a "drawbridge mentality" (i.e. "I've moved to the countryside but I don't want others to do likewise"), nostalgic rather than progressive, and conservative rather than ready to experiment.

Large land-use change proposals such as for reservoirs, coal mines, quarries, airports or power stations are especially likely to arouse their anger. They can claim some credit for the slow shift of agricultural policies across Europe away from a price-support philosophy to one of environmental stewardship, a policy shift begun in England.

Campaigns against noise and light pollution have been pursued over recent years and a greater understanding of the ecological and botanical impacts of these side-effects of urbanism is developing, indicating that they are not merely issues of aesthetics and residential amenity.

External link

• CPRE website (http://www.cpre.org.uk/)