CPRE West Midlands has joined with other environmental organizations in the region to produce a manifesto for improving the environment of the West Midlands.

‘Enriching our Region’ (link to pdf file download) presents challenging but achievable proposals for environmental improvements which will benefit the people of the West Midlands and help the region to play its part in revitalising our urban areas, protecting our natural environment and our heritage, reducing harmful pollution and keeping our countryside beautiful. It aims to make the West Midlands a more attractive area in which to live, work and spend leisure time.

The Manifesto sets out how the environment in the West Midlands is one of its greatest, and often unsung, assets, from Stratford on Avon to the Staffordshire Moorlands, but also how in some areas the environment is degraded or neglected, particularly in some run down urban areas.

The Manifesto highlights four areas where action is particularly needed. It calls for land use and transport policies to be in tune with environmental concerns, for greater effort to resolve global environmental issues, for policies which ensure the right population balance and stop the unsustainable drift to the shires and for much greater emphasis on protecting and enhancing natural assets such as woodlands and waterways.

And the Manifesto sets out specific actions that could be undertaken by central and local government, the business community and individual people to achieve the change needed.