A report published by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) [Alliance member] shows there has been an 82% increase in new housing units given planning permission in England’s 34 AONBs in the past five years, despite repeated commitments by the Government to ‘maintain national protections for AONBs for the benefit of future generations’. Although AONBs have the highest level of planning protection, CPRE states that the report ‘shows clear evidence that housing developers are applying increasing pressure on local authorities to build new homes on AONBs by exploiting poorly defined and conflicting national planning policy’.