LAST week, in the light of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s bullish pronouncements on house-building, an interviewer on Radio 4’s Today attempted to stoke an argument between spokespersons for two charities, the Town and Country Planning Association and the Countryside Alliance. The arbitrating role quickly became defunct, however, when both calmly agreed—as most people do—with the premise that we desperately need more (affordable) housing, that not all of the current green belt is sacrosanct and that planners and developers need to ‘take local people with them’ in the discussions.
Some unloved, outdated green—or, rather, grey—belt land is clearly crying out for development. Conversely, in Buckinghamshire, near Kenneth Grahame’s Wild Wood in which Ratty, Mole and friends frolicked, a fierce, well-expressed campaign has been mounted against a proposed film studio on…
