Discover Hertford Online Forum

A recent poll in The Hertfordshire Mercury showed that 80% of respondents believed that developers should be allowed to build on Green Belt land to ease the housing shortage.

Do you agree?

Personally no. I was listening to news today regarding buildng homes on known flood plains.. and how since 2002 197 developments have been allowed despite being advised against being built due to high risk of flooding. Looking at all the flooded homes and some will have been built on a floodplain... I would like to protect the Green Belt land as land. Anyway in the 1980's I went to open air festivals to protect the Green Belt.. where have all the people gone who wanted to protect the Green Belt land???????

admin wrote:A recent poll in The Hertfordshire Mercury showed that 80% of respondents believed that developers should be allowed to build on Green Belt land to ease the housing shortage.

Do you agree?

Really? 80% Was it just the developers that were canvassed?

And calling it a 'housing shortage' is questionable when there are 750,000 empty homes in the UK.

i think whoever reported that should be shot The mercury polls rarely receive more than 5 votes let alone 100s or more!

Anyway no from me of course, no brainer. There's plenty of brownfield land, and then all the empty properties too. (commercial and residential) But of course;l No one has an independent view on this. Home owners would never want it, but those not on the ladder probably would want it.

A friend of mine who used to work at the council told me that East Herts are actively blocking development around Hertford. When you look at it, it is always on a relatively small scale. I don’t think that there should be a blanket ban and should be dealt with on a case by case application.

An interesting issue this one. I was involved in pre-development works on the recent housing development site opposite the station at Watton at Stone and when I first visited the site in Spring 2011 it was covered in a carpet of red poppies. It looked quite beautiful and I thought what a shame it was to be turning this into housing.

I assumed the locals would be mostly opposed to the development for a number of reasons, though mostly environmental, but I was most surprised with the general consensus having spoken to a number of the neighbours. Rather than being opposed to the development, the majority said they would rather it were built upon rather than remain as open farmland.

I found this attitude quite strange but as far as I could gather, although people liked to see countryside around them, they did not want to live next to it! The folks in the dwellings next to the site seemed to be of the opinion that there was more security if they were next to more houses rather than open land - maybe this is an underlying factor behind the Mercury results (though I suspect dubious polling methods are more likely!).

Aelle wrote: Rather than being opposed to the development, the majority said they would rather it were built upon rather than remain as open farmland.

I found this attitude quite strange but as far as I could gather, although people liked to see countryside around them, they did not want to live next to it! The folks in the dwellings next to the site seemed to be of the opinion that there was more security if they were next to more houses rather than open land

An interesting anecdote. I find their attitude astonishing, though.

There should be limited development in and around Hertford but for private homes only.

Not if its part of a flood plain to one of our many rivers ............................just in case!

As part of the ongoing East Herts District Plan Review, the draft plan suggests that development on the green belt is inevitable and indeed actually required to meet the housing requirements of the county and towns / villages contained within it.

The District Planning Executive Panel discussed the latest information at tonight's meeting and the meeting minutes, webcast and inputs can be found here:

Website: http://online.eastherts.gov.uk/moderngo ... 2419&Ver=4

The green belt review is part of the wider district plan document which will be published and sent out for a twelve week public consultation in the very near future (maybe this needs a topic in itself)?

As this thread relates specifically to the green belt, a diagram documenting the suggested development sites within the green belt (and associated housing volumes) required to meet the East Herts housing needs can be found here:

PDF: http://online.eastherts.gov.uk/moderngo ... iagram.pdf

The Hertford chapter of the Preferred Options Consultation can also be found here:

PDF: http://online.eastherts.gov.uk/moderngo ... x?ID=22276

Further information regarding the District Plan and phases can be found here:

http://www.eastherts.gov.uk/index.jsp?articleid=15325

George