Field day

Save Newcastle Wildlife (S.N.W.) have made a 'Corporate Complaint' against Newcastle City Council.

"We submitted a request for an enforcement case to be raised on 4th June 2017 to address this issue, but are yet to receive a response."

Read more (and sign up if you can) here.

The unstoppable concreting over the Green Belt is a national issue, not just a local problem.

My own view is simple. We need housing for low waged people (so-called social housing) and for those starting on the home ownership ladder. Fortunately the north east as a whole has plentiful post industrial and under used land where affordable homes could be built. Much of this land lies along the axis of the Tyne itself, east to west. This is also a major transport axis and opportunities for employment and easy to reach facilities. It is also not the area that developers wish to exploit. Instead these wish to monetise the city's Green Belt because of the additional (premium) weighting this carries for profit. Selling a house out on the Green Belt produces greater profits. So public housing policy is stifled and private greed wins every time. It's enough to make any one burn down a Grade II Listed building ...

The ever readable Rowan Moore, architect correspondent for The Observer has worthwhile views as always:–

"At the centre of debates about green belts is the question of trust. In theory it should be possible to build on a very small proportion of the nation’s green belts in such a way that affordable housing and sustainable communities are created, and more people have more and better access to nature than before. In practice few people trust that this will happen, as the available evidence is that we will get instead a smearing of developers’ standard products across the countryside, for sale at inflated prices."

Please do read the entire article here.