Poll: Is the Government failing the Shropshire countryside?

The MP for Stone, who lives near Bridgnorth, admitted he was surprised and shocked when his son William, 47, was unveiled as the latest high-profile new member for Nigel Farage's party.

Although Mr Cash junior has never been a member of the Conservative party, his father has been a Tory MP for 30 years, representing first Stafford and then Stone following a boundary review.

Sir Bill has also been an ardent Eurosceptic, having campaigned against the Maastricht Treaty and a regular thorn in the side of his own party.

But he has always remained a loyal Conservative and today appealed to Ukip members, including his son, to support the Tories in delivering a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union.

William Cash, who lives in Upton Cressett, yesterday revealed his reasons behind his decision to join Ukip, claiming he had been fighting a "civil war" for three years against planning policies that were damaging the county, its tourism and its heritage.

He also said Prime Minister David Cameron's decision to drop North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson as Environment Secretary during the summer had influenced his decision.

Sir Bill said: "My son has made a monumental misjudgment. All that will happen is that Labour and the Liberal Democrats, who do not want a referendum, will benefit.

"I have argued for a referendum for years. Now we have a Conservative Bill that has been drafted to deliver one.

"You can only have a referendum if Parliament approves it and, to do that, we need a majority. Ukip cannot do that.

"I'm very disappointed in what my son has done. He was not a member of our party."

Gavin Williamson, MP for South Staffordshire and Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister said: "I can't see what relevance someone who held no position in our party joining another party has."

It comes following the defection to Ukip of Tory MPs Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless. Mr Farage said: "I am delighted to be welcoming William to the party and am appointing him as heritage spokesman ."

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Williams Cash said he had become Ukip's heritage spokesman because Ukip "is the only party prepared to publicly declare themselves against the ruination of the English countryside from excessive housing, solar farms and windfarms."

Here he explains his decision:

"I have huge respect for my father Bill Cash MP. I admire his passionate 30 year fight for preserving English sovereignty and his fighting to save Britain from the creeping federalism of Europe's unelected politicians. I also admire and respect MPs such as Philip Dunne and Owen Paterson.

We all agree on so many things, including the importance of tourism to the rural economies such as Shropshire.

But Coalition policy has brought over-generous tariffs on solar parks that will blight the Shropshire countryside and introduced VAT on listed building repairs, which has been financially devastating for the artisans and local builders I have used to restore Upton Cressett over the years.

Many of the craftsmen I used in 2008/9 – before the VAT historic buildings tax was introduced – are now working in local factories operating fork lift trucks. Their traditional skills are wasted.

Yet developers pay no VAT whatsoever on all 'new build' housing projects, of which there are no shortage in towns like Shifnal and Bridgnorth.

Worse, the new housing is being built right up to the village green. I am not alone in becoming increasingly sick of the state of near permanent civil war that exists in the Shropshire countryside as each day sees yet another planning application.

PG Wodehouse, who was brought up close to Upton Cressett, referred to Shropshire as 'the paradise of England'.

Well, paradise no more. Not if you look at the worrying number of recently approved applications for development. Shropshire's countryside tourism and the county's 'Blue Remembered Hills' of AE Housman fame are now under almost daily attack.

Why are developers choosing unspoilt countryside around important tourist areas and market towns? It is simply crazy to introduce industrialised parks around parts of the Shropshire Hills. Why is the coalition allowing this rural vandalism?

Locals are quite rightly very angry. Many also feel let down that the Government is failing to curb such vandalism on our precious countryside.

For the last three and a half years, I have been chairman of the a very well supported anti-wind farm campaign group in the south Shropshire Hills around Bridgnorth. This experience of dealing with Government planning policy (and Coalition claims for 'localism') has led to my disenchantment with the coalition in countryside matters. The Government simply does not understand the current level of anger in the countryside.

I have been appointed Ukip Heritage spokesperson as I have experience that includes being invited to submit an 80-page report on heritage to the Government; being a member of the Historic Houses Association; sitting on the founding steering committee for the National Opposition to Wind (a political lobby group); sitting on the national fundraising and development arm of the Churches Conservation Trust; being invited by Shawn Spiers, president of CPRE to write on planning policy and the countryside for the CPRE's quarterly magazine; and launching the magazine's highly successful 'Save Our Historic Landscape Campaign'.

The latter concluded with a petition to David Cameron signed by 100 leading figures from the worlds of art, business, heritage and conservation.

The Prime Minister personally wrote me a two-page letter of acknowledgement assuring that 'the Government have made it very clear that our reforms to the planning system must maintain our robust protection for the natural and historic environment'.

I was not surprised to find that my proposals (drafted by the leading parliamentary law firm of Sharpe Pritchard) fell on largely deaf ears within the Coalition.

This is because of Osborne's determination to build all over the countryside, with developers given a presumption in favour of development.

The setting of impossible to achieve local council housing targets is being used as a clever loophole to allow developers to build 'affordable housing (read immigrant housing) wherever they like.

The sacking of Owen Paterson and the betrayal of rural England – over HS2, rampant new affordable housing and a plague of renewables – is an area that UKIP can pick up enough votes from disaffected rural and suburban voters in 2015 to win some important marginal rural seats. Hence the critical need to get the policies right in relation to heritage, tourism and planning.

As heritage spokesperson, I will do my best to articulate the feelings of many voters who, like me, are sick of the endless planning wars in the countryside.

Voters are disenchanted with Cameron and the Coalition as they do instinctively care about Britain's green fields."