LETTER: Time to stop the destruction of greenbelt sites
A reader discusses the greenbelt system.
The greenbelt system was set up to stop the urban sprawl from one town, city or village, conserve the countryside and protect food production, occasionally a small number of developers managed to gain planning permission for the odd windfall site development, but now as the many objectors featured in this newspaper are starting to realise Greenbelt development has become an industry in its own right.
One or the worst councils now for strip mining the greenbelt is South Staffordshire District Council, back in Spring 2009 they boasted No, No and No to Greenbelt Plunder in their own Review Magazine,
Some councils have lost that ‘green loving feeling’. and turned to actually inviting developers to strip mine the greenbelt with their site allocation document SAD consultation. Talk about inviting a wolf to your door. They’ve built thousands of new doors for the wolfs to knock at.
The greenbelt development system has been manipulated so that most of the things the local people want to object to greenbelt developments about have been declared not valid reasons for objections, to the point that most objections are simply ignored to ensure the greenbelt strip mining machine needs constant feeding with new greenbelt sites.
Once a greenbelt site is lost to housing development, the first team to go in are the wrecking crew with their large diesel engine-powered bulldozers to clear the site of any pesky trees, plants, grass and wildlife, preparing a lifeless flat canvas for the next stage of greenbelt to Lego Land development.
A fleet of builders' vans then appear and the wrecking crew move on to strip mine the next fallen greenbelt site.
Hopefully we are now seeing the end of greenbelt industrial strip mining as there is no point insulating your home or turning off your gas boilers as any new greenbelt developments will simply cancel out any climate change prevention savings we make, so if any council is actually interested in climate change prevention it must be back to – No , No and No to any new greenbelt plunder.
Maybe it’s time for the formation of Greenbelt Political Party.
Gordon Edward Fanthom, Swindon
Send us your letters for publication:
Email us at letters@expressandstar.co.uk or write to: Letters, Express & Star, 51-53 Queen Street, Wolverhampton WV1 1ES. Letters MUST include the writer’s name, address and telephone number. Letters will only be published anonymously in exceptional circumstances. The editor reserves the right to condense or amend letters.
