Times - Not on my Green Field

Times Column for 11 March

NOMGF - Not on my green field!

By Kent Barker

Not long ago you had to go to the town hall or local council offices to see details of planning applications. Now it’s all online. Of course you have to be a bit of an anorak to spend time searching the database. But I justify it in my capacity as chair of my parish council planning committee.

This is a rather grand title for a not-very-influential role. Basically we have no power to decide applications. Although we can make recommendations to the planning officers or councillors at borough level, it’s they who make the final decisions.

Here endeth the lesson in local government. The point is that I get to see the applications for planning permission that come up in my village and, more importantly, to read the comments others make on them.

In a nutshell, no-one particularly welcomes new buildings near them. But some accept that, without new homes, the village will wither and die. And those are generally the people who have lived here the longest. It’s the most recent newcomers who seem to be the most vociferous in opposing new development.

One application that came before us was for a fairly sizeable house extension in a little lane on the edge of the village. The name of the applicant rang a bell and then I remembered he’d recently put in an objection to a small development of affordable houses that the parish council was promoting.

Now, the council considers affordable housing absolutely vital, and surveys repeatedly show there is a real local need. Villagers often find it impossible to compete with commuters to buy anything around here. Old farm workers’ cottages have been bought up and knocked together for incomers. Council house building stopped with Thatcher in the 1980s. Housing Associations have struggled to find enough land to build on. Young people who want to stay in the village near their parents (and possibly care for them in their old age) find they have to move to Maidstone or Hastings for any sort of home they can afford.

Anyway, the parish council effectively owned this field on the village periphery. Twenty years ago they sold off a segment for half a dozen affordable houses. Now they were proposing to lease another tranche to a Housing Association to build on. All six new affordable homes would have to be offered to people with direct connections to the village. And an allotment would be built for other residents. It seemed a no-brainer. Yes, it was regrettable that an attractive, if relatively small, green field complete with grazing sheep would be built on, but it is in the High Weald so there’s really no shortage of pretty countryside around here.

But the level of ire was something to behold. There was a public meeting packed with people making a broad range of objections.  One woman who had recently moved in was overheard saying of affordable tenants: “we really don’t want those sort of people living here do we?”

And the people down the lane wrote a letter you can see on the planning website: “Any development on this rural countryside area will… have a very significant negative impact on the aesthetics of this area… and will significantly increase noise, light and traffic pollution. We seek to protect and conserve the rural nature of this area and are therefore strongly opposed to any further housing development within this area of (the village)”.

Yes, but hang about, you are applying for a sizeable house extension. Doesn’t that sort of constitute ‘further housing development’ which was the very thing you were objecting to? And what about when your house was built? If residents had taken the same view back then, you wouldn’t be here at all. 

And, talking of traffic pollution, I guess you drive to one of the towns five or ten miles from here to do your shopping. You can’t do it in the village anymore because everything’s closed. I remember when there were three shops and two pubs in your little hamlet alone. Now there’s just the one pub left. In the main village a mile away only the butcher’s shop seems secure. A hardware shop closed last year. The village grocer’s is up for sale and could close. The post office and toy shop shut years ago. One of the two pubs has just closed its doors.

That’s the point. Young people are forced out of the rural areas where their families have lived--often for generations. More affluent newcomers arrive and buy up homes and extend them, making them even less affordable to locals. And then…. then they object to any further development in case it has a detrimental effect on the ‘rural nature’ of the area. It does seem a bit of a case of pulling up the drawbridge!