Who Gets the Land? Everyone Wants a Piece

Britain has a land problem. There is not enough of it, what there is in the wrong place, and far too many people want it for far too many things — housing, food, energy, nature, and apparently shooting birds for fun. The Government has finally noticed and published its first Land Use Framework: a long-term plan to stop every ministry making it up as it goes along, and instead use proper maps and data to decide what goes where¹The Land Use Framework for England. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. 2026. <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69ba6ba026909a14239612e7/Land_Use_Consultation_Accessible.pdf>. The goal is to restore nature, build 1.5 million new homes, grow food, and generate clean energy — all at the same time, on the same small island. Ambitious does not quite cover it. But full marks for trying.

Conservationist Mark Avery has given the Framework a surprisingly generous score of  “6.5 Out of 10” for a document produced by the Government. His argument is simple: Britain’s wildlife is in trouble, intensive farming is largely to blame, and private landowners have spent too long putting profit before the public good²‘Land Use Framework for England – Mark Avery’. 2026. Markavery.info <https://markavery.info/2026/03/21/land-use-framework-for-england/> [accessed 23 March 2026].

Avery reserves his sharpest words for the uplands — these vast, rain-soaked hills currently given over to sheep and grouse shooting. He argues they should be doing something far more useful: storing carbon, managing water, and recovering their natural ecology. He wants the state to buy land and stop subsidising practices that, in his words, “knackers the environment.” A tentative thumbs up, then, though you sense he would have preferred something with rather more teeth.

Not everyone shares Avery’s guarded optimism. The Countryside Alliance of course has weighed in with the kind of response that suggests the very fabric of rural England is being torn apart, stitch by stitch, by people who have never owned a Barbour jacket³Countryside Alliance. 2026. ‘Land Use Framework: Our Response’, Countryside-Alliance.org (Countryside Alliance) <https://www.countryside-alliance.org/news-content-type/land-use-framework-our-response> [accessed 23 March 2026].

They conclude the Framework “could be a step toward more coherent policymaking” — high praise indeed — after spending several hundred words explaining why it is, in fact, a catastrophe. Their central concern is what they call an “assault” on shooting. Shooting, they insist, is already a “multifunctional” land use that delivers conservation, community, and economic benefits. The idea that managing moorland for grouse might not be the highest and best use of ecologically critical upland landscape does not appear to have been seriously entertained.

They are also worried about farmland being swallowed by solar panels, trees, and housing. The Government says the Framework will protect the most productive agricultural land. The Alliance is not convinced, and would like some “firm safeguards,” please, in writing, preferably laminated.

Their proposal for a formal “Rural Community Impact Assessment” has not been adopted, which they find deeply disappointing. Without it, they argue, rural voices will simply not be heard. One notes, with admiration, that the Countryside Alliance has never previously struggled to make itself heard.

The Alliance wants tradition respected. Avery wants the uplands rewilded. The Government wants everything at once.

The real question — whether shooting birds across a managed moor or wood is a public good or a private pleasure dressed up in the language of conservation — sits right at the heart of this argument, largely unanswered.

Watch this space. It will run and run.

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• 1
  The Land Use Framework for England. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. 2026. <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69ba6ba026909a14239612e7/Land_Use_Consultation_Accessible.pdf>
• 2
  ‘Land Use Framework for England – Mark Avery’. 2026. Markavery.info <https://markavery.info/2026/03/21/land-use-framework-for-england/> [accessed 23 March 2026]
• 3
  Countryside Alliance. 2026. ‘Land Use Framework: Our Response’, Countryside-Alliance.org (Countryside Alliance) <https://www.countryside-alliance.org/news-content-type/land-use-framework-our-response> [accessed 23 March 2026]