I
write as the Honorary Secretary of two charities: the Richard Jefferies Society
and the Jefferies Land Conservation Trust.
1.
Special interest – historic, landscape, cultural
2. Local
people opposed
3. Local
authority opposed
4. Other
sites available
You are obviously not aware of building proposals that
were granted permission earlier this year by your Secretary of State for a
development that ticked all these requirements. These apply to a planned housing
estate and industrial site at Coate and Badbury Wick that lies in the foothills
of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to the south east
of Swindon and very close to Coate Water Site of Special Scientific Interest.
The area is rich in ecology, archaeology, and was immortalised and made famous
by the Victorian nature writer, Richard Jefferies whose birthplace abuts the
development site and is now a museum. The planning application was opposed by
over 52,000 people who signed a petition, Robert Buckland MP and the
conservative led planning committee. Other sites are available to meet
Swindon’s 5 year land supply of housing depending on what targets are agreed.
On page 32 of the Church Times (14 December 2012) there is an interview with Candida
Lycett Green – author, broadcaster, journalist and Sir John Betjeman’s
daughter. The questions asked of her cover a considerable amount of ground but
her clear passion for the Downs near to where she lives at Uffington,
Oxfordshire and her love of old buildings and England’s countryside reveal how
she follows in her father’s footsteps. In response to changing one thing in
England, Ms Lycett Green said that she would “stop the present Government
making a balls-up of the planning system ... They will be the Government to go
down in history as wrecking England”. And her anger is directed at “greedy
developers’ building on Richard Jefferies’s sacred Greenfield landscape outside
Swindon”. There is also an article by
Candida Lycett Green in the January 2013 edition of the Countryfile magazine. She writes a heartfelt plea about what has
happened to Swindon, and in particular how no one has taken any notice of the
Richard Jefferies Society regarding development on Jefferies Land at Coate. She
states that David Cameron says that he will defend his beautiful part of
Oxfordshire against the builders, and then she compares this to the fate of
Swindon (her nearest big town), where countless developments have covered the
town, and in spite of many in-fill sites available how Redrow Homes are set to
build on the only decent historical/literary area of land in the town at Coate.
I realise that you are powerless to reverse a
planning decision and your Secretary of State has not made an unlawful
decision. However, the decision is wrong and has created bitter resentment in
Swindon, not to say total disillusionment with your government’s commitment to
protect important greenfield sites whilst bringing in a National Planning Policy
Framework that makes it easier to build anywhere.
Yours sincerely
Jean Saunders
