Public support for Green Belt: common rights in countryside access and recreation

Public support for Green Belt in England is legendary but is often dismissed as sentimental attachment. The aim of this paper is to situate public support for Green Belt within a history of common rights and access campaigns and a specific cultural landscape of outdoor recreation. This paper contends that Green Belt in England carries notions of common rights established in struggles against the enclosure and privatisation of open spaces from the early nineteenth century and predicated on an understanding that the policy conveys a communal interest in land and landscape. It argues that contemporary public affection for Green Belts is expressed through practices of ‘commoning’ or the performance of claimed common rights of property. Drawing on field research with a popular campaign in North West England, the paper evidences the deployment of a history of access struggles to preserve Green Belt as recreational amenity and accessible countryside. In the perception of Green Belt as a collective resource the paper posits the continuing relevance of common rights to planning policy. It concludes that a clearer understanding of popular support for Green Belt may provide planning scholarship with new perspectives on notions of public good and the use rights of property

Evaluating local government equalities work: The case of sexualities initiatives in the UK

Measurement, as one aspect of managerialist practice, has become important in the local government arena in the UK. Legislative changes support the development of sexualities equalities initiatives in local authorities, but there is an absence of systems for evaluating these. Current indices of success can be applied to sexualities work in local government, but these are limited, given the impact of factors such as homophobia, party politics and local government restructuring. Complementary indicators concern policy making, anti-discrimination, and community leadership. Whilst provoking, perhaps, a politicisation of managerialism, such developments may be most usefully framed in administrative terms