Devon CPRE
“It is true Devon country – hills, hollows, hedge-banks, lanes dipping down into the earth or going up like the sides of houses, coppices, cornfields, and little streams wherever there’s a place for one… Just now, with the harvest coming on, everything looks its richest, the apples ripening, the trees almost too green. It’s very hot, still weather; the country and the sea seem to sleep in the sun.”
John Galsworthy
Officially, the best county in England*
Whether we’re Devon bred, an incomer or an expat like Galsworthy, we all know that Devon has a rural character unlike anywhere else in the world. Soft, lush and green, with deep winding lanes and gently undulating fields, it is rural England at its most enticing, and most benevolent. It is a place where city life barely features, towns are still sleepy and Broadwoodwidger was a Rural District Council until 1966.
The fourth largest county in England, Devon has more than a third of its area within protected landscapes including the two National Parks of Dartmoor and Exmoor, and five National Landscapes (formerly Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty) – largely due to the original work of CPRE in the last century in creating these protections. We also have the third longest coastline among English counties, divided between the rugged Atlantic northern coast and the lush dramatic coves and inlets of the sub-tropical south coast.
UNESCO World Heritage Sites include the Jurassic Coast in East Devon and the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape, while the UNESCO Biosphere in North Devon includes a World Surfing Reserve. Nearby unspoiled Exmoor is an International Dark Sky Reserve.
Devon CPRE fights to keep Devon’s unique landscape character intact, to ensure that the march of progress – 100 years ago it was the motor car and ribbon development, today the solar farm and the greenfield housing estate – does not rob us of the very asset that makes Devon such a valuable place.
* Daily Telegraph survey, 2024. ‘Devon didn’t just top our rankings, it blew away the competition. Simply put, it has everything’.
No-one else does what we do
We’re not sentimental – we know that Devon needs economic activity, needs affordable housing, needs to play its part in the national effort to change the way we power our lives. But we are the only third-sector organization that tries to ensure that the landscape, our farming heritage and our primary tourism assets don’t get obliterated by the market-driven march of blunt-edged government policies and a creaking planning system.
Devon is a soft target for grand schemes: our farmers use the world’s best grassland to raise almost half our food, for very little financial reward. Their fields look to policy-makers like cheap and abundant platforms for their development dreams.
Planning is everyone’s least favourite subject until it arrives at their door. Then you need us, to help and guide you through the processes that can allow or prevent a major change to your life.
Protect Devon’s Countryside
Balancing progress with preservation.
Defend Communities
100+ planning cases tackled each year.
Empower Councillors
Training local leaders to stand up for residents.
Support Farmers
Safeguarding livelihoods and landscapes.
Challenge Overdevelopment
From solar sprawl to wind giants.
Volunteer-Powered
Join, donate, or become a Devon Defender today.
We address around 100 planning cases a year, across all the county’s planning authorities, on behalf of our members.
We train dozens of Parish and Town Councillors to feel comfortable with the planning system and better represent their constituents.
We maintain a watching brief over ever-escalating threats to the countryside and its communities from sprawling housing estates, massive solar farms and giant battery installations, landfill sites, anaerobic digestion systems, towering wind turbines, the sell-off of ancient woodland, quarrying/mineral extraction projects and badly sited tourism facilities.
We are volunteers, funded by our members. Join us, donate to us, or just lend us your voice as a signed-up Devon Defender – and help preserve Devon’s glories for future generations.