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With fears that the Government wants to relax planning laws, residents and councils are preparing to take on the developers in the battle for the green belt

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Should there ever be a National Office for Nimby Organisations — and I rather like the idea of something called NO-NO — then it would probably have its head office here in St Albans.

There is a pressure group to suit every taste in this small and delightful cathedral city on the banks of the tiny River Ver. Whether it’s STRIFE (fighting a rail terminal) or CLASH (fighting a housing estate) or SOS (fighting airport expansion), everyone seems to have a bone to chew. And they have a pretty formidable track record, too.

For example, SAST (fighting a Tesco superstore) has recently seen off the retail giant — not bad, considering Tesco’s global headquarters is just down the road.

Delightful: St Albans is only 20 miles from London, but feels a world away from the capital

For proof of the fighting spirit in this corner of Hertfordshire, just drop in next weekend when arguably the city’s most famous action group holds its annual beer festival. CAMRA, the Campaign For Real Ale, was established here in 1974 to fight the decline of the traditional British pint.

It’s now a national phenomenon with more than 140,000 members and branches everywhere. But St Albans is still HQ and the frontline in the battle for warm bitter.

Climb to the top of the medieval Clock Tower — between the ancient market place and the old Abbey cathedral (with the longest nave in England) — and you can enjoy a spectacular view of what was once the ancient Roman city of Verulamium. Bits of Roman architecture still protrude from the ground.

At first, it’s hard to imagine that we are just 20 miles from Central London.  Looking out across the verdant acres  of the local grandee (the Earl of  Verulam), I could be viewing a bit of the Cotswolds. But then I turn to the South-East and there are ant-like movements in the distance. It’s the M25 motorway.

Look to the North and the planes are forming an orderly line out of Luton Airport. To the South-West, a line of pylons leads towards some distant structures poking up above the treeline. They are better known as Watford.

And Watford may be getting closer. For a stretch of farmland between the two, currently home to 140 cattle and 400 sheep, is the proposed site for a new rail freight centre with five vast sheds, one of which will be larger than Terminal Five at Heathrow.

Protected: The town, with its famous cathedral, is encircled by green-belt land

If it gets the go-ahead, the area can look forward to a further 3,000 juggernauts clogging and polluting its roads every day.

Were it not for fields like these around St Albans, all this area would, by now, be part of Greater Watford or Greater Hemel Hempstead or Greater Luton — if, that is, the entire lot had not simply been absorbed into  the urban Godzilla that is Greater London.

Instead, like so many cities, towns and villages, it is shaped by land which is protected from development because it has been designated as ‘green belt’. For that, we can thank a dogged band of inter-war campaigners who predicted the threat of creeping urbanisation  and finally pushed through the Town and Country Planning  Act of 1947.

Today, there is green-belt land in all parts of the UK, although most of it — more than 6,000 square miles — is in England.

Its purpose is five-fold: to stop urban sprawl, to prevent settlements ‘coalescing’, to protect the countryside, to protect the setting of historic towns, and to encourage urban regeneration. And a trip up the St Albans Clock Tower shows just how effective it has been. But for how much longer?

Out in the commuter belts and on the suburban fringes of rural England, the locals are starting to worry.

Sacrosanct: The 1947 Planning Act designated green-belt land to prevent urban sprawl, protect the countryside and historic towns, and promote urban regeneration

The word ‘community’ is now so woefully over-used that it has become idle shorthand for two or more people with anything in common, be it stamp-collecting or devil worship or ginger hair.

A true community is a place where people live together and feel they belong. St Albans, with its medieval city centre, its  tidy little suburbs and its  open spaces beyond, is just such a place. Half the workforce may commute to London, but its residents call themselves Albanians (which must confuse tourists from the Balkans).

Everything, from the signs to the market stalls to St Albans City Football Club’s atmospheric old stadium, is decorated in the city livery of blue and yellow.

And because it has good schools and all this history just a 20-minute train ride from Central London, it is a very popular community. Some might say it is full. It explains why the average house in St Albans now costs 13 times the average local salary.

It also explains why it can claim to be the most messed-around-with place in England.

Last year, St Albans City & District Council had to field more planning applications than any other district council in the land — 2,638 (and up from 2,243 the year before). That’s one for every 54 people.

Popular: High house prices reflect restrictions on development in the market town

No wonder so many of them are protesting about something. No wonder this bit of green belt is more stretched than a tutu on a sumo wrestler.

And make no mistake. What is happening in St Albans could soon spread throughout Britain. For the past few days have seen a sudden outburst of mixed messages on the future of the English landscape.

Led by David Cameron and Nick Clegg, ministers have been unveiling fresh plans to revive the building industry by relaxing some of the rules on housing developments and home extensions.

But this planning free-for-all has already sparked a rebellion. Several councils, including  Tory ones, have warned that this ‘foolish’ shake-up will  blight streets, slash property prices and set neighbour  against neighbour.

Meanwhile, the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has  been at pains to stress that none of this threatens green-belt  land, but campaigners are not  so sure.

They point to Chancellor George Osborne’s suggestion that local authorities might swap around bits of green- belt land.

Last ditch effort: The Coalition wants to revive the construction industry by relaxing planning rules

Then again, the influential think-tank Policy Exchange has argued that there is plenty of land, including green belt, which should be fast-tracked for development if we are ever  going to bring sanity to the housing market.

Policy Exchange’s founder, Nick Boles, is the newly-appointed Planning Minister. In his first appearance at the Commons Despatch Box, he assured a Yorkshire MP that his local green belt was safe ‘for now’.

Meanwhile, Mr Pickles’s department has just finished a little-noticed ‘consultation’ on its proposals to ease restrictions on old agricultural units.

The idea is that you would no longer need planning permission to turn an old barn into workshops, offices or ‘leisure’ units.

Groups such as the Campaign For The Protection of Rural England (CPRE) are greatly concerned, arguing that a canny developer might soon end up transforming a cowshed into a housing estate or a Tesco. And there are no shortage of tired agricultural units sitting on green-belt land.

It was the CPRE, founded in 1926, which led to the creation of the green belt in the  first place. Development on green-belt land can be allowed in special circumstances, but the CPRE has just produced a report showing that, at present, a green-belt area the size of Slough is destined for the bulldozer in the next 20 years.

Safe, 'for now': Planning Minister Nick Boles backs the relaxation of planning laws

Who to believe? Campaigners are sceptical of Communities Secretary Eric Pickles assurances that green-belt land will not be threatened

Current plans across English green belts include, among other things, 80,000 new houses, several new roads, open- cast coal mines, an airport extension, industrial parks and a number of golf courses. What no one disputes is that the country desperately needs  new housing — and that the economy urgently needs  a defibrillator.

Unblocking the planning system, it is argued, would certainly get the economy moving. But it might also upset large numbers of people in green-belt areas. Given that these are Tory and Lib Dem heartlands, here lies a dilemma for the Coalition.

Whatever the economic reality and however logical the Government’s plans, few backbenchers want to be seen siding with the developer against a mainstream organisation like the CPRE (Patron: The Queen; President: former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion).

So is battle looming between the modernisers and  the Nimbys?

‘People who think we must pursue economic growth at any cost may use “Nimby” as a term of abuse,’ says Paul Miner, Senior Planning Campaigner for the CPRE. ‘But we don’t see anything wrong with trying to protect your community.’

Over at the Communities Department, a spokeswoman is adamant that there is no  need to worry. ‘The green belt is an important protection against urban sprawl,’ she says. ‘There are absolutely no plans to allow new building on the green belt.’

  More... Rebellion over home extensions: PM's planning free-for-all hit by council backlash More trouble for Dave: Tories in revolt over Cameron's plans for bigger house extensions without planning permission

But try telling that to  Melvin Teare, the secretary of the St Albans Green Belt Association, a vigilant band of municipal meerkats watching out for the first hint of an encroaching developer.

He guides me down a path from the A414 to Hedges Farm, a stretch of countryside which gives St Albans breathing space from the M25 and Watford.

It is here, on the site of an old aerodrome, that developers are planning that £400  million,  300-acre rail freight exchange, all of it on green-belt land. The plan has already been thrown out once by the Secretary of State, but is now back on Mr Pickles’s desk after the developers went to the High Court, which ruled that he should reconsider.

It’s not the prettiest bit of countryside and the noise of the M25 washes over us like the sound of the sea against a Cornish cliff, but it is a frontier.

‘The whole point of the green belt is to “preserve historic towns” and you don’t get  much more historic than the Roman town of Verulamium,’ says Melvin.

He takes me to another site, near a nudist camp at Junction 21A of the M25, where one developer is trying to turn a green-belt field into a hotel.

Development: The Government hopes relaxed planning laws will also tackle Britain's housing shortage (file picture)

A hundred yards away, another developer is proposing to plant a care home and some houses. It’s rough ground, certainly  no beauty spot and, for now, it  is protected.

But if the developers and their lawyers can spot a change in the rules and keep leaning on  a council smothered in applications and appeals, things may change.

Then, as Melvin shows me on a map, St Albans will actually become virtually contiguous with Watford.‘We’re just fire-fighting all the time,’ says local Tory MP Anne Main. ‘The developers employ former planning officers and lawyers and keep appealing. It’s expensive for the council to keep fighting.

‘But we all have to keep fighting because I don’t think the public will ever forgive us if we let the green belt go.’

Like everyone else, she rejects the ‘Nimby’ charge, arguing that there is plenty of development potential within the city centre.

‘I don’t want another hotel in the green belt, for example, but I do want another budget hotel in town which will bring visitors in to the centre.

The long view: St Albans's historic clock tower affords a panorama of the surrounding countryside, but for how long?

‘We should be concentrating on redevelopment of brownfield sites.’

Nor is she against all development on green-belt land either. She steers to me an enchanting new attraction, Butterfly World, a collection of gardens and wild meadows on a 27-acre, green-belt site in view of not just the M25 but the M1, too.

The ultimate plan here is for a giant Eden Project-style biodome that will allow the public to walk through a rainforest surrounded by thousands of exotic butterflies.

Even now, there are large glasshouses where you can walk among hundreds of them.

Here, at the junction of two of Europe’s busiest motorways, all is peaceful as an Owl Butterfly, a tropical monster the size of my hand, flutters around my head.

This place already draws 110,000 visitors a year. If they can get the funding for the biodome, then the numbers will shoot up.

But there are no Nimbys grumbling about this.

Back in the town centre, Peter Trevelyan, vice-chairman of the 500-strong St Albans Civic Society, guides me proudly through the cathedral precincts and up the Clock Tower.

It’s market day down below and there is a gentle buzz about the place.

But don’t be deceived. They’re fighting folk round here. History has already known two Battles of St Albans. Mess  with the green belt and there will be a third.










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