Housing plan on edge of ancient Derby woodland refused
Developer JGP Properties Limited said its application would create "a sustainable and integrated new urban area within Oakwood".In planning documents, JGP said the development would "safeguard land for flora and fauna for the long-term" and would integrate open spaces and green corridors "to both protect and harmonise" with the oak woodland.But fears were raised the homes would stop wildlife and water entering, harming the "irreplaceable" nature reserve, as well as impact road safety on Lime Lane and increase flooding risk in nearby Breadsall.
Councillors at the meeting raised concerns over a lack of school places and GPs in the area.However the meeting was told the city has fallen behind its five-year housing supply target, and 8,000 people are on the waiting list for affordable housing.Mr Peck, representing developer and applicant JGP Properties, told the planning meeting the development should be allowed as new homes are desperately needed in the city.About 150 objectors were in the council chamber's public gallery to hear the decision.After the meeting Mid Derbyshire MP Jonathan Davies, who also voiced his thoughts in the council chamber, said: "The proposed development undermines nature and the environment."It would also come at a cost for the next generation, for whom we must be the custodians of irreplaceable sites like Chaddesden Wood."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
9 minutes ago
- The Independent
Experts reveal the hidden health benefits of having an allotment
Allotments offer far more than just a space to cultivate fruit and vegetables. They are crucial for fostering physical, mental, and social wellbeing, according to gardening experts. This profound benefit is the central focus of this year's National Allotments Week, an annual awareness event organised by the National Allotment Society. For anyone seeking a significant boost to their overall health and happiness, these verdant plots present a compelling and holistic solution. They help people connect Gardening expert Kim Stoddart, author of The Climate Change Resilient Vegetable Garden, who began running a community garden project at Creuddyn in Ceredigion, Wales, after the pandemic, found that initially volunteers were struggling to connect. 'There's still a sense of that in the world at large, but communities bring people together and gardens bring people together,' says Stoddart, editor of Amateur Gardening magazine. 'There's such a strong sense of togetherness through the ability to nurture an allotment in a community environment. They are such important social hubs and can help with socialisation, alleviate loneliness and anxiety and worries about the world. They are beautiful places where people can come together and feel that the world is ok.' They encourage healthy eating If managed properly, an allotment can produce enough food to supplement a family's weekly shop with fresh fruit and vegetables throughout the year, according to gardening for health charity Thrive. Many allotment holders garden organically and have a sense of satisfaction in the knowledge they've grown the edibles themselves, know how they've been grown and exactly what they are eating. Growing your own also promotes a sense of fulfilment, the charity adds. They tackle gardening guilt 'I always find in the courses I run that people feel guilty that they are not doing things in the right way and that their plots are not like the gardens they see on TV. A lot of people feel that they are not doing enough. 'But actually, we need our gardens and our community spaces to be nurturing right now, to help us cope with things that are happening in the world. So the therapeutic benefit of them is huge.' They encourage kindness 'There's nothing like a good old-fashioned barter and exchange, and community allotments are a very good place for this, but it's also about reaching out to people and the connections you can create with little acts of kindness,' says Stoddart. 'It makes you feel good about yourself, although you have to be aware that you don't want to pass on something that people don't want, like forcing endless courgettes on people just because you want to get rid of them. 'But giving things like cuttings or strawberry runners, or whatever you have a surplus of, feels really nice to engage in that way. It's down-to-earth, grounded and hopeful.' They help people with illnesses Allotments not only support physical health through aerobic exercise such as digging and raking, but can also help improve speech, cognitive and motor skills for people with debilitating illnesses, Thrive says. Being outside in sunlight can also increase vitamin D levels and lower blood pressure. They encourage recycling creativity 'Turning rubbish into the wondrous is an incredibly powerful feel-good action. Take something that would otherwise go to landfill and find something useful to do with it. It feels like you're taking back control,' Stoddart continues. Creating simple things such as old welly planters, or using broken pots to create rockery-like displays which will help protect plants drying out if you have heatwaves, can give people the feel-good factor, she says. 'The community garden was a building site housing a lot of rubble. So, we've used lots of stone and rubble as a mulch around plants, which helps protect them from heat. 'Old windows can be used as impromptu cold frames. We need to carry on growing into the winter and make use of this precious outdoor space when the weather changes, which would also give people an excuse to go to the allotment.' They promote seed-saving 'There's something very sacred about the saving of seed in other cultures around the world. It's like full-circle gardening where you are saving money by saving seed from your flowers and crops so you can sow them next year. It's also a way of creating more resilient seed. 'It's connecting you with the full-circle completion of the plant, it's saving you money and it's a way of taking control back. The hand-eye coordination, the touching, the feeling, the harvesting and seed-saving connects you with the ebb and flow of the seasons and the hope and promise of future food growing in the years to come.' She notes that during heatwaves, for example, the seeds saved from crops which have performed the best will be more resilient in the future, because genetically the seed has coped with the heatwave. ' Lettuce, for instance, is easy to save from, as are tomatoes which will grow true to type, and rocket is a resilient allotment growers' ally. It self-seeds and is great for ground cover, and radish is very good as well.' National Allotments Week runs from Aug 11-17.
BBC News
10 minutes ago
- BBC News
Red panda twins born in Isle of Wight zoo breeding programme
A zoo has announced the birth of red panda twins after introducing the parents in cubs were delivered at Amazon World, Isle of Wight, on 17 mother Xiao, 10, was paired with 10-month-old male Flint after he was imported from Belfast Zoo with a view to breeding "in the next couple of years", the zoo previously species, which lives in the eastern Himalayas and China, is endangered and on the decline, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In a Facebook post, the zoo, near Arreton, said it was "over the moon" at its added: "The cubs are still young and there is always a risk but Xiao has done such a fantastic job so far."The cubs will remain hidden in the nest boxes until at least three months old. "Senior staff have been and will continue to monitor the enclosure, nest boxes and cubs via CCTV installed to make sure all is well."Red pandas are poached for fur, get caught in hunters' wild pig and deer traps and are also under threat from forest clearance, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Telegraph
10 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Chinese hackers have seized control. How did we let this happen?
A civilisation that cannot defend itself really should not expect to survive, and after the latest cybersecurity news, I wonder how it can. An official advisory was recently sent out to the US military, warning that all forces must now assume their networks have been breached. The enemy is inside the house. What it means is that no system connected to the internet can be defended. Our own national cybersecurity agency asked UK businesses to make this presumption in 2020. The reason this hasn't been bigger news is that we've become fatalistic and weary, as one cybersecurity attack follows another. So when we discovered in early July that Chinese hackers had gained control of Microsoft servers at hundreds of US government agencies – including the US nuclear weapons agency – it was just another hacking story. What made this one noteworthy was that there wasn't immediately a fix or a patch, Microsoft admitted last Tuesday. Incredibly, confirmation of the US military's 'assume breach' alert had to be dragged out of the Department of Defense via Freedom of Information Act requests by a campaigning non-profit called Property of the People. These developments are the latest stage in an ongoing state-sponsored Chinese campaign, in which hacking has evolved from widespread commercial espionage a decade ago into something far more threatening. The latest phases, Salt Typhoon and now Volt Typhoon, are meticulous and sophisticated. They target not just government agencies like the National Guard, and China-critical MPs like Sir Iain Duncan Smith, but also private sector companies in the energy, telecoms, transport and water sectors. Ciaran Martin, former head of NCSC, the cybersecurity centre based at GCHQ, says that China's capabilities have been transformed. 'Now think of dozens or even hundreds of [individual] hacks at the same time – 'everything, everywhere, all at once' in the words of Jen Easterly, recently departed head of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.' Software attacks on our computer systems can create unique damage in ways that conventional warfare cannot. Let's consider two. While aerial bombing can produce spectacular instant results, targets can be disassembled prior to attack, and can be quickly rebuilt after the attack. Both happened with the recent attack on Iraq's nuclear facilities. But recovering from cyber attacks is much harder. Ask the British Library, which has still not restored all of its services. 'Printed catalogues and handlists are available in our Reading Rooms', it still advises visitors to its website. The attack took place in October 2023. A second way in which cyber attacks now present a unique challenge is the ability of Chinese hackers to 'live off the land' after they break through. Rather like special forces embedded behind enemy lines, hackers conceal themselves undetected for months or years. To the guardians of the network, they are just another innocent user. 'Both Salt and Volt Typhoon were in play for years before being detected,' writes Martin. 'And they are strategic compromises of the West on a scale hitherto unseen by any other cyber power.' Not only do we not know when the attack is over, we don't even know when it has begun. How did this happen? If I haven't depressed you enough, this is where it gets particularly troubling. Cybersecurity is a gnarly failure of accountability and regulation that spans decades of indifference, and implicates business complacency and government apathy. The internet protocols (IP) we use today are completely rotten. The great and the good of the IT and telecommunications industries spent the entire 1980s in international committees devising complex secure networking protocols, only to be met with mistrust and specifications no one really wanted. Fed up with waiting, we adopted today's protocols, which were cheap and simple to implement, but not secure. Now, the international standards bodies that might devise a successor to IP are dominated by China. When they fail, suppliers can hide behind licensing agreements and expensive lawyers. No one goes to prison for bad security design. Their customers – us – are guilty of negligence too. Salt Typhoon took advantage of a bug in Cisco routers that users had not bothered to fix for seven years. As a society, we rush to implement technologies without thinking too hard about externalities. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) opens up lots of new holes, and also lowers the bar so that even the technically unskilled can plant hacks. All in all, then, this may not seem a good time to force Britons to use a new government identity service. Especially when you know that 'red team' penetration testing proved in March that this could be penetrated by hostile foreign agents without them being detected. This is what Baroness Neville Jones calls 'a piece of critical infrastructure'. Chinese agents may already be 'living off the land' inside the One Login system, on which your government wallet has been built, and soon perhaps, your digital ID. But don't expect Peter Kyle, the Science and Technology Minister, to put the brakes on the One Login project when he's its biggest fan. To survive and prosper, we need serious and technically aware people in his position, who listen to the security professionals. Kyle appeared on Newsnight last week wearing jeans and a T-shirt and trainers, all of which were intended to signal to viewers his youthful love of digital technology. He is 54.
