Risks To Thousands of Acres of Protected Land

[Kymba]

Just read this in tonights London Evening Standard.......
More then 10,000 acres of green belt land are under threat from developers including..
BP, British Aerospace and the Queen.
They could make Billions of pounds from building thousands of houses on protected land under plans to meet Goverment's housing targets.
Speculators have snapped up large areas of green belt land ahead of the imminent White paper on planning which is expected to relax rural protection rules.
BP could make nearly £10 billion if its advanced plans to build 20,000 homes on 3,700 acres of green belt land it owns in Hertfordshire get the green light.
The crown estate which manages property owned by the Queen could make up to £500 million from the developement of 6,000 homes near the A1
Arlington Securities thr former property arm of british aerospace hopes to make £3billion from sale of some of its green belt land near Hatfield.
green belt boundaries are also under review in other groweth areas around London. Upper Lea valley near Thurrockstand to lose thousands of of acres. gatwick want almost 600 acres for a 2nd runway and another Runway at Luton would swallow up more then 815 acres of green belt including FIVE ANCIENT FORESTS.!

[Wild-Woman]

Don't even get me going on this Kym! Grr! I know Hertfordshire well, having a daughter a uni there. All those ancient trees etc.

Greenbelt should remain safe for the future, not be swallowed up for housing and greed.

I'm going. I might get a bit verbal........................grr!

[Kymba]

You hit nail on the head there Wild. Its all about greed and making Money, No matter what all these big companies say about the Enviroment and saving our green areas, they dont give a monkey's really. All they care about is making Lots of Money no matter what the cost!
Its down to us to put a stop to it, By not buying the products they sell.. But then they know people wont do that!
People want cheap housing because in most places now they have been priced out of the Housing market, or cant afford to buy and need houses to rent..And asbeing talked about in another Thread.. more and more people go abroad more regularly meaning more flights = More planes = more Pollution = more damage to ozone layer!!!!!
Very soon we will have NO Green Space left for future generations to enjoy
The world has gone mad

[nightshade]

It is the people that grant planning permission who are to blame
they have no understanding of the overall requirements of an ecology.
They watch TV programmes such as Spring-Watch with their children,
and think all is well ,it will not matter if we dig up those usless fields
there are no animals to cause a fuss over.In their ignorance not realising
that the invertabrates in that field are the food chain for birds and mammals
for about 3 kilometers around
There should be compulsary training for these ignorant people,not just "advice"
from "consultants" which they ignore because they pay them (and have no respect for their advice)

[Gill Catton]

Originally Posted by nightshade

There should be compulsary training for these ignorant people,not just "advice"
from "consultants" which they ignore because they pay them (and have no respect for their advice)

Apologies for the following novel.......

This is not always the case. All of the projects highlighted will be conducted alongside thorough ecological survey, hopefully by an ethically sound consultancy of which there are many.

It is not generally the local authority who pay in any case, it is usually the developer and the local authority hopefully reads the results of all of the environmental survey work including ecology, archaeology, air, noise, geology, etc.... and then has to make a difficult choice - I thank my lucky stars that that is not my decision to make - even on a small scale - for example which is more important, fields for skylarks or football pitches for kids???
It's obviously impossible for one person to be an expert in all of these skills and ultimately the person who makes the final decisions can only look for advice

I have to say though that even within my tiny career span (6 years) the level of knowledge and ecological understanding within local authorities has vastly improved with most that I have dealt with and things are definitely getting better - though as I have said it's not easy decisions that the authority as a whole has to make.

If we are to build new housing, new sports grounds, provide better flood defence, allow for new developments and new businesses (potentially required as the nature of business as a whole in Britain changes), obtain the bare raw materials (gravels and sands used in such development), excavate new landfil (so it's not all shipped out to china or wherever), provide green power, these works have to go somewhere............. finding suitable land is not as easy as you would expect.

I am uneasy also about airport extensions as I don't really see this as a way forward - can't help but feel we shouldn't be increasing flights, but then I don't properly understand the overal big picture of British economy I personally have no idea which areas of the economy / industry are in decline and may need replacing or how our airports may have a part to play in that. - I'd rather see an extension to an existing airport than a new one though. and believe me it won't be easy for them, dealing with the environmental aspects will cost way more than the construction of the runway.

I am not totally defending the decisions just trying to illustrate that it's a situation that is more difficult than it may outwardly seem.
And I stand by my earlier statements that I think sites should be assessed first and foremost on their individual merit, rather than where they are - for example I would save buglife's campaign site on the Thames corridor - industrial Brownfield waste ground - perhaps not pretty but valuable for all sorts of species, over some green pesticided to death farmland on the edge of a town - even if the fields were in the greenbelt - but that's because I will always be biased towards what is most valuable for wildlife.

[smartie]

Well said Gill. Sorry, I've got a bit of an essay coming on as well.

It is very easy to criticise people at all levels in government for taking decisions we can't immediately agree with - I worked in government for all my career and I and my colleagues at times had to make some really difficult decisions which affected people's lives and which seemed wrong to individuals who held one point of view very strongly or who didn't fully understand all the issues we were having to juggle. Some of the decisions may well have been wrong, of course, but my experience is that very few were taken lightly or without an honest attempt to take into account all the relevant issues.

I'm not saying we should blindly accept everything national or local government proposes to do, of course. If we think policies are wrong we should say so. My point is just that the issues are rarely as simple as they seem at first sight.

OK, lecture over. Imagine me ducking.

[Kymba]

But How can anyone Justify this >>> Runway at Luton would swallow up more then 815 acres of green belt including FIVE ANCIENT FORESTS.

[Gill Catton]

Originally Posted by Kymba

But How can anyone Justify this >>> Runway at Luton would swallow up more then 815 acres of green belt including FIVE ANCIENT FORESTS.

I'm not justifying it but I think it's important that they assess all possible options so that they can work out which option's best.

If they must expand an airport, I'd rather they studied all of the potential sites properly then picked the best one for the project than they just randomly picked one that looked best on the surface, the ancient woodland is definately the kind of thing that would be taken into consideration in making a decision. However it does 'rank' below statuatory designations such as SSSI.

[demicav]

The problem is that the country is becoming over populated. You only have to look at the world from a birds eye view to realise just what a small island the British Isles is. We cannot accomodate the growing population without it being at the expence of something else. I believe that one day much of Britain will be concrete, hope I'm not around to see it as it will be a terrible state of affairs when it does happen. I don't really want to go all political on the subject but at the end of the day the government lives in cloud cuckoo land and the sooner they come back down to planet earth the better. Things like this really annoy me but as long as the government continue to allow people in the country at an incredible rate it will carry on. These people have to go somewhere, so more land is dug up and more houses are built, familiar pattern this isn't it ? All this about the green belt being protected, the government couldn't care less and it's those sort of people that could make a real difference. There was a similar problem not far from me where developers were moving in to build on beautiful countryside that had an abundance of wildlife. Everyone kicked up a stink about it and it looked like the developers may lose their quest, but no, the developers sought the help of the government and Gordon Brown gave the go ahead. It's being built on right now, shame for the deer, the birds and all the others.

[Kymba]

At the end of the day it isn't about Housing for people or more planes for people to travel further afield.. Its all about certain RICH people and companies making lots more Money, S*d the Consequences!

[Gill Catton]

Originally Posted by Kymba

At the end of the day it isn't about Housing for people or more planes for people to travel further afield.. Its all about certain RICH people and companies making lots more Money, S*d the Consequences!

So what's the solution?

[Chiltern Chris]

Hi (bit of a rant coming up),

I've been officially involved with assessing the environmental consequences of many major developments both through the planning regime and during the detailed design stage e.g. Heathrow terminal 5 and Channel Tunnel Rail Link. I assess the quality of the ecological components within the Environmental Statements which accompany developments. I'm afraid that what Gill says is not completely correct.

The Environmental Statement (ES) is a report by the developer saying what he predicts the environmental consequences of the development will be i.e. it is not an independent assessment. It is then up to others to prove them wrong. Even if the developers ecological consultants are expert and members of IEEM (and therefore stick to a code of conduct), it is very easy to interpret ecological data in a number of different ways e.g. I have seen within different sections of an ES the same plant being classified as 'common' and 'rare'. Both of the classification were technically correct due to the criteria being used to assess rarity - in this case the plant was 'nationally common' but 'rare' in the context of Greater London. Predicted environmental impact can be 'massaged' in exactly the same way by altering significance criteria.

Unfortunately, few planning authorities have the skills (professional ecologists) to recognise the way in which biological data is manipulated to gain a specific result.

This is a recognised problem which many local authorities have yet to properly acknowledge. ALGE (Association of Local Government Ecologists) recently wrote a Publicly Availabile Standard (similar to a British Standard) on "Biodiversity conservation standards for spatial planning in the UK". Even this national standard only advises local authorities to employ ecologically training staff. It's no wonder the planning authorities can't challenge developer's ecological assertions when the developers use professional ecologists and the planning authorities have few ecologically competent staff. I know that some local authorities are more progressive and exceptions to the rule exist but on the whole, ecologists in a position to influence the outcome of planning decisions within local authorities are a rare breed.

Having said this the planners themselves are in a difficult position as the housing allocations are set by government and they have a duty to make sure the targets are met. If you look at Planning Policy Statement 9 (PPS9), http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/83..._id1143833.pdfwhich is the government's planning guidance on Biodiversity you'll see what planning authorities are supposed to do when considering planning strategies and planning apps. PPS9 only covers England, Wales is covered by Technical Advice Note 5 (TAN 5) but this was written in 1996 and is just a waste of paper.

Finally as Local Development Frameworks take primacy in planning decisions you MUST, MUST, MUST object to the zoning of development at both Regional and local planning consultations, because this is where the real decision is made, not at the planning application stage. So watch out for the public consultation on your local Local Development Framework and get involved. Many of them are being re-written as we speak due to changes in the planning regulations so get involved and challenge your local planning authority at the time you can have most impact.

I could rant on and on but suffice to say, unless it is shown to you personally that your planners are ecologically competent enough (including the ecological and physical processes that underpin our ecosystems) to implement PPS9, I'd assume they're not.

Chris

[Lords and Ladies]

Originally Posted by Kymba

The crown estate which manages property owned by the Queen could make up to £500 million from the developement

At the very least, that money should be put into creating new habits that someday might be equally valuable in wildlife terms. Wildlife neutral as it were.

Some knowledgable person here should write to Prince Charles and test out his supposedly 'green' credentials. He likes writting letters when things annoy him .