Under its agreed Core Strategy, prepared after extensive consultation, Forest of Dean District Council allocated sufficient land to maintain a five year supply of new housing, most of which is on brownfield land within the Forest’s market towns. However, developers are now claiming that building on such land is not economically viable and are submitting planning applications for major housing developments on greenfield sites outside the towns.

When the District Council refuses these applications, developers are appealing to the Planning Inspectorate claiming that the Council cannot now demonstrate the 5-year land supply required by national policy. Successful appeals on this basis are currently common throughout the country and the Forest of Dean is no exception.

Things have got so bad that the District Council has recently decided, to the dismay of CPRE and others, not to challenge an appeal for a 200 house development at Allaston, to the north of Lydney. The District Council refused this application on sound environmental grounds, a decision supported by Lydney Town Council, local residents and other parties, including CPRE.

Mike Mackey, Chairman of CPRE’s Forest of Dean District, said: “This is a very worrying development, not only for Lydney and its residents, because it may well create an unwelcome precedent. CPRE is aware that there already are similar applications for more than 400 houses in the planning pipeline for greenfield sites at Tutshill, Berry Hill and Newent.”

He added: “We are in significant danger of losing large areas of our countryside to residential developments, none of which have been allocated for housing in the democratically approved local plan. If nothing is done to rectify this situation, Forest residents face the landscape being covered unnecessarily by unsuitable housing development, leaving derelict brownfield sites which are closer to towns, existing services and infrastructure.”