‘It's like Alcatraz': The home county under siege from Rayner's green belt blitz

Telegraph

22-05-2025

In a sleepy town on the edge of Hertfordshire, a revolt is brewing to protect prized green space from a slew of major developments.
The uprising came together in a packed church hall meeting last week, attended by more than 100 Potters Bar residents opposed to plans to concrete over local land.
The group has already set its sights on blocking a number of projects, including plans for Europe's biggest data centre in South Mimms and a separate 900-home development nearby.
'The data centre will be enormous, and it's going to have high-security fencing all the way round with security lights on 24 hours a day,' says Margaret Ohren, one of the meeting's organisers who has lived in Potters Bar for 32 years.
'It'll be like building Alcatraz in the middle of Potter's Bar. It's absolutely ridiculous.'
With plans for developments creeping closer to town boundaries, Ohren fears that Potters Bar will become 'another London borough'.
'Potters Bar is a town that is like an island, and we're surrounded by green belt,' she says. 'If all these proposals go ahead, we'll be subsumed into a load of buildings.'
The town is one of many places in Hertfordshire facing an onslaught of proposals on green belt land, with the county fast becoming a flashpoint in Angela Rayner's building blitz across the countryside.
Findings shared by CPRE Hertfordshire, a local charity, show that 65pc of large-scale proposals it has screened since the Government published its new national planning policy framework (NPPF) in December are on green belt land.
Those include two mammoth data centres, including the South Mimms site and a separate 84,000 sq metre project in Abbots Langley, which was approved by Rayner's team last week.
In North Herts, a 45-hectare solar farm in Wandon End is also going through a public inquiry after its developers appealed to the Housing Secretary to overrule the council's decision to block the site.
A 15-minute drive away, a 35.5-hectare solar farm and battery storage system is set to be built at Sperberry Hill.
This is alongside a number of proposed residential developments, with 4,800 homes planned across Hertfordshire's green belt.
Chris Berry, of CPRE Hertfordshire, claims there is an 'unrelenting onslaught' in Hertfordshire, as there are 10 solar farms waiting in the wings alongside seven battery storage systems, six of which have already been approved.
Campaigners and residents blame the development blitz on inconsistencies in the Government's definition of the 'grey belt', which is deemed lower-quality green belt land, such as disused car parks.
To stem the tide, CPRE has begun a national petition urging the Government to amend its definition of the 'grey belt', which has garnered more than 1,400 signatures at the time of writing.
Debating the Government's new Planning and Infrastructure Bill in the Commons last week, Matthew Pennycook, Labour's housing minister, said the test of what qualifies as grey belt is 'very clear in the NPPF', and the framework is 'clear' that the green belt can only be built on in 'exceptional circumstances'.
However, Abby Coften, chief executive of CPRE Hertfordshire, says the way it is defined is 'giving developers free rein' to build in the countryside.
'There are so many contradictions between national policy and what's happening on the ground,' says Coften. 'It's devastating for the countryside, wildlife, our own environment and our health and well-being.
'Planning applications which have been refused are now coming back because developers are seeing an opportunity from inconsistencies in the NPPF.'
More than 29,000 homes could be built on Hertfordshire's brownfield sites, according to CPRE.
'If you think about that on a national level, these sites could be redeveloped, they could provide affordable housing and that would avoid us building all over the countryside,' says Coften.
'The Government clearly wants all of these additional homes, and they're not prioritising the environment.'
Gary Ansell, chair of the Kings Langley and District Residents Association, says that in more than 25 years of heading the group, he says it is 'the worst we've ever seen in terms of developments happening'.
'We accept that development needs to happen and it's good to use brownfield,' says Ansell, but he adds that major projects are 'eating away at our green belt'.
'The biggest fear is that our village is suffering a death by a thousand cuts,' he says. 'We're losing our identity as a historic village in Hertfordshire.'
Hertfordshire's green belt has been made all the more vulnerable because of national pressure to 'build, build, build', says David Zerny, a fellow Kings Langley resident.
'Introducing grey belt but without a clear definition means that ultimately, inspectors are not given much guidance and that means the green belt is now very vulnerable,' he says.
Mr Zerny says Hemel Hempstead, Kings Langley and Watford are also under 'particular threat' if more land near the M25 can be counted as grey belt.
'The purpose of the green belt, ironically, was to give Londoners a place to go for recreation, for mental health,' he adds. 'Taking that away from us hurts Londoners as much as it hurts people who live here in the shires.'
Oliver Cooper, leader of the Conservatives on Three Rivers District Council in Hertfordshire, representing the village where he grew up, says a huge amount of development has been pushed out of London into the home counties, including in Hertfordshire.
'A lot of that is based on the fact that the grey belt, as a concept, has been completely mis-sold,' says Mr Cooper. 'If Keir Starmer were a shopkeeper using that script, he would probably be prosecuted by Trading Standards.'
In response to criticism, the Government has argued that it will not put its target of building 1.5m homes by 2030 ahead of the environment.
A spokesman for the Housing Department says: 'Our planning changes are about building on brownfield first, and clearly protecting long-standing green belt purposes while setting out a more strategic, targeted approach to this type of land.
'And while we are clear that we must build the homes and infrastructure that people need, our ambitious plans will not come at the expense of the environment.'
However, back in Potter's Bar, Ohsen is demanding a nationwide plan to ensure the countryside is not left in the lurch.
'It's a crucial time,' she says. 'Save the green belt now, or we'll never see it again.
'I've got grandchildren - they need housing, but do they need housing on the green belt? If we join up all the towns in the South East, they're never going to see a cow, or a sheep, or a bluebell. It could be something they'll read about in books.'