Date published: 2005/08/04
The BBC says:
Green belt campaigner Tim Harrold stands on the edge of a field in his home county of Surrey and makes a grand sweeping gesture towards the horizon. "Isn't it lovely?" he says.
Unfortunately, he adds, this country lane will soon become a park-and-ride facility for more than 400 cars, complete with street lights and a roundabout.
"Isn't it lovely" is a phrase Mr Harrold repeats several times as we drive around the edges of Guildford, taking in its green belt 'hot spots'. It is, undeniably, lovely, and he and his colleagues believe they have to defend it to the last.
The arguments are as old as the green belt. In the case of the park and ride, with congestion and the environment to consider the scheme is an essential part of the county's transport strategy, says the council, but the CPRE disagrees with its location and its viability.
Mr Harrold is speaking on the 50th anniversary of the first government circular that told councils to look at designating areas of green belt land in England.
Countryside campaigners say the green belt - the 'lungs' around towns and cities - is "under threat as never before", while the government insists it is being "maintained and increased".
For volunteers at the Surrey branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) - of which Mr Harrold is chairman - there are several green areas in the vicinity that are cause for concern.
One battle that's already been lost is over expansion plans at the University of Surrey.
Jim Andy, 59, lives on the edge of the land the university has owned since the 1960s, but had previously only partially developed.
In 1987 it was designated as green belt land, but 10 years later the university successfully argued at a public inquiry that it should be able to expand onto 60 hectares of it, having had planning permission to do so since it first bought the land.
It's a complex case, but in many ways the same arguments are being replicated around the country, particularly with educational institutions under pressure to take on more and more students.
Needless to say those people on the "preserve the greenbelt at all cost" side of the argument are often just NIMBYs. They are living in nice countryside and they are trying to defend their privilege against anyone else being able to do the same. It's possible the greenbelt in Surrey is especially wonderful, but the greenbelt around Cambridge is largely sterile agricultural land. Indeed much of the so-called brownbelt land around Cambridge is more green than the so-called greenbelt land. And suburban gardens provide more of the "lungs" to towns than any agricultural land ever could or does. When the chattering classes (with chief cheerleader the BBC journalists) start to have some common sense the country might be able to move forward.
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