This week’s BBC Countryfile programme will include a report from Essex to illustrate the national issue of housebuilding as the issue rises up the political agenda.
Countryfile reporter Tom Heap visited a site at Hatfield Peverel, between Witham and Chelmsford, that was the subject of a planning inquiry in January after the government “called in” a planning application for 140 homes on a wildlife meadow.
The site was chosen to illustrate the conflicts that exist in the countryside and in market towns between the need for more homes and people’s desire to maintain the character of their area.
The programme will also feature the work of the Essex Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) working with local MP Priti Patel to help get the government to call-in the plan. Tom Fyans from the CPRE said he was very concerned that speculative planning applications were causing huge problems in the countryside.
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