Nick Herbert

Hands off our green belt

It didn’t take long for the people of West Sussex to work out that inserting the word ‘eco’ before ‘town’ in order to promote a new development was no more than greenwash.

It didn’t take long for the people of West Sussex to work out that inserting the word ‘eco’ before ‘town’ in order to promote a new development was no more than greenwash.

It didn’t take long for the people of West Sussex to work out that inserting the word ‘eco’ before ‘town’ in order to promote a new development was no more than greenwash. Developers had been trying to build on greenfield land near the historic town of Arundel for some time, so when Brown began to mention ‘eco-towns’ they seized on the idea.

The tiny village of Ford was to be transformed not into a new town, but into an eco-town. Birds would sing, rabbits would hop and butterflies would flutter… and 5,000 houses would be built on open countryside, a flood plain and Grade 1 agricultural land. What’s more, it turned out, the houses would be built to lower environmental standards than other developments.

So locals took up arms. The men and women of West Sussex marched in their thousands. But it wasn’t just Ford. All across the country, ‘eco-towns’ were seen off by residents.

It shouldn’t take locals pouring onto the streets to get their voices heard. But Britain, the most centralised country in the Western world, has so marginalised communities and councils that protesting is frequently their only hope.

Eco-towns are a particularly pernicious example, but there are countless similar schemes, all designed to prevent people from making their own decisions. Labour has created a monumental quango, the Infrastructure Planning Commission, to take decisions without the inconvenience of democratic accountability. Regional assemblies have been abolished, only to see the powers transferred to wholly unelected Regional Development Agencies.

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