A leaked report setting out proposals to shake up Government policies on the countryside is causing concern in North Yorkshire.

Details of the secret 200-page report, commissioned by Prime Minister Tony Blair, have been published in The Times six weeks before it was due to be released.

Civil servants from the Cabinet Office's new performance and innovation unit have come up with ideas which include scrapping existing rules protecting prime farmland from building.

Such a move could open up large areas of the countryside to new development including housing, holiday cottages and leisure facilities.

But the report's authors also recommend all agricultural development should be subject to full planning control on the same basis as other commercial development in the countryside - ending the partial exclusion which has existed in planning law since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act.

The report, which acknowledges that 30 per cent of people in the countryside have experienced poverty in the past 10 years, suggests licensing laws should be relaxed to allow country pubs to double up as banks, shops or post offices.

A tourism tax is also suggested for so-called "honeypot" areas such as Goathland on the North York Moors, famous as the setting for YTV's Heartbeat programme.

Hotels and restaurants would be allowed to charge a voluntary "congestion tax" to raise money for repairing environmental damage and improving local tourist facilities.

Ideas for reducing the amount of traffic clogging country roads include road tolls, car parking charges and more widespread use of Park & Ride services.

Ryedale District Council's head of planning services Mike Moffoot said: "I haven't heard of the farmland recommendations at all. The implications could be quite far-reaching. We will have to see whatever the Government are going to come out with."

Rob Simpson, North-East regional spokesman for the National Farmers' Union in York, said: "We welcome the freeing up of planning controls over new development on farmland."

But he said: "One of our concerns is that agricultural buildings could be restricted by full planning controls. Farmers who want to alter their buildings to comply with animal regulations would be totally restricted."

Dorothy Fairburn, regional secretary of the Country Landowners' Association (CLA), said: "This is a leak and we really need to see the final report.

"However, what we have seen so far really reflects the necessity for a new Department of the Countryside and Agriculture with a Minister who can take a definitive overview."

Bill Breakell, tourism and transport officer for the North York Moors National Park, said the authority had been instrumental in encouraging a 'living countryside' - the aim of the authors of the leaked report.

Mr Breakell said: "The proposal for a voluntary 'tourism tax' in rural areas is already used in some National Parks, although it has not been implemented in the North York Moors.

"This is because it is considered that many rural attractions or accommodation are already disadvantaged and that to create an extra charge would, in effect, work against them commercially and possible generate additional traffic as visitors may choose to stay somewhere without a tax, but then travel to the National Park because of its special qualities."

Mr Breakell said the suggestion that local visitor taxation would reduce congestion in places such as Goathland was of concern.

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