TIME after time; when residents form protest groups in order to defend green spaces and green belt land, developers, local councillors and our MPs act out a ‘cruel performance‘.

In May 2015 Planning Application No. 15/1026/FUL was made for 95 houses and flats and associated works… to facilitate erection of a primary school… on land adjacent to Woodside Road, Abbots Langley.

I and dozens of others made valid objections to the proposal. Residents living nearby started a protest campaign. A meeting, chaired by the MP (R Harrington) and attended by Cllr S Bedford was held. The local councillors seemed to support local residents but were crying crocodile tears. By law the need for the school was, and is, considered ‘a special need’ so green belt could and can be allocated/taken for use. The school was never built but the houses were!

It seems that a similar ‘cruel process’ is happening to the Carpenders Park/Oxhey campaign.

The following developments, fully listed in last week's Observer, will, most likely, go through similar processes and procedures ending up with the loss of green belt or farmland: Oxhey Lane - Watford Heath, South of Little Oxhey Lane and Carpenders Park Farm.

I see that Baroness D Thornhill is endeavouring to explain how the unfortunate LibDem councillors are constrained by unjust laws relating to planning and building regulations. Unfortunately the die was cast when the LibDems went into coalition with the Conservatives and the LibDem leader announced that she would take the UK back into the EU.

Once permission for a basic development has been given some tend to grow, seemingly out of control, with little resemblance to the original plan publicised by councillors and generally accepted by local residents at the time. I suggest that the original Leavesden film studio plan 1995 (pictured) is a case in point. Ninety percent of the aerodrome was to remain as green space, much of it open for use by the public. Instead we have a multi-storey car park and no public green space. As for the LibDems adoption of a ‘climate emergency’ policy why are there no solar panels on the roofs of the vast studio buildings which now cover the green fields?

My conclusion is that, although, local councillors are ‘outgunned’ by government, we should not give up defending our green and pleasant land, especially at the time of general elections.

Mr D Bennett

College Road, Abbots Langley