Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales
In parallel with the central management structure, there are 14 regional branches across Wales, whose members are volunteers, and whose principal function is to consider and campaign on local planning and development issues.
These include: This was organised in Wales by the Branches of CPRW from 1954[9] onwards and led to the enhancement of many Welsh villages[10] The competition was discontinued in the early 1990s.
This was to be satirised by Amabel and Clough Williams-Ellis’ novel Headlong Down the Years: A tale of To-day, which parodies the style of the Regency novelist Thomas Love Peacock.
It had authority to build and operate hydro-electric generating stations and transmission lines covering over an area of 2,100 square miles of North Wales, consisting of the whole of Carnarvonshire, Merionethshire and Anglesey and a good deal of Denbighshire.
Following a lengthy inquiry, in which the Caernarfon Branch was represented, the suggestion made by the President Lady Eirenne White that the road should go under the Conway in a tunnel, was accepted by the Inspector, and has proved a much better solution.
Initially it was using crude oil from the adjacent refineries but in 1992 National Power proposed changing this to orimulsion, a mixture of water and bitumen, which came from Venezuela.
The Pembrokeshire Branch of CPRW joined with other local groups in opposing the scheme and eventually National Power suggested an additional desulphurisation plant.
It was replaced by the Pembroke B Power Station on the same site which opened in 2012, which has turbines which run on natural gas and has a heat recovery steam generator The CPRW has been an active member of the Mid Wales Alliance, a group of 21 organisations opposing the plans by six energy developers for major wind farm and associated infrastructure development in the Montgomeryshire uplands.
If built, these schemes in conjunction with other consented (Tir Gwynt and Garreg Lywd), built and proposed wind farms would mean in excess of 600 wind turbines in Mid Wales and the necessity for major Grid infrastructure over large areas of the Montgomeryshire and North Shropshire countryside, as there is no further capacity to transfer energy production from the area.
[24] The wind farms are above the 50 megawatt jurisdiction of the Welsh Assembly, and as a result plans have been dealt with by the UK government's Department of Energy and Climate Change.
There has been opposition to proposals for more wind farms and infrastructure from the majority of the local population on the grounds of its effects on the landscape, environment and tourism industry.
Local MP Glyn Davies, a past president of CPRW, had been warning for many years of the threat posed to Montgomeryshire by what he claimed was the unbalanced, poorly evidenced approach of the Welsh Government to wind farm development.
[33] The founding figures at the Shrewsbury Meeting included Miss Gwendoline Davies of Gregynog Hall, Sir E. Vincent Evans and Dr. Thomas Jones, of the Cymmrodorion, Dr Willoughby Gardner of the Cambrian Archaeological Association, Sir Patrick Abercrombie, a founding figure of CPRE, Cyril Fox, the recently appointed Director of the National Museum of Wales,[34] T. Alwyn Lloyd, the noted Welsh architect and planner; and Clough Williams-Ellis.
Matters which occupied CPRW were subjects such as Ribbon development, the design of rural buildings, indiscriminate felling of trees and unregulated advertising.
[36] The CPRW also supported the idea of colour washing of Welsh housing, which can best be seen to-day at Aberaeron, as a result of the influence of Clough Williams Ellis.
[37] The conflict between the demands of re-armament in the pre-War period and the need for airfields, bombing ranges and training areas posed a particular problem for CPRW.
