...while it's still there

It seems nothing short of a tragedy that during 2010, the year when we all want to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of Howards End we may instead be faced with a decision being announced which will spell the end of Forster Country as we know (and love) it. This stark possibility looms very large because of the East of England Plan which will determine where literally thousands of houses are to be built across our region. This scenario is not generated simply by the land greed of local, regional or even national builders and developers (what a horrid word!) but by unelected members in the European Community who are trying to decree where future 'homes' need to be built.

It might bring a wry grin to your face that in1946, when Stevenage was designated to be the first New Town, our inspiration, E M Forster himself, successfully combined with Elizabeth Poston, whom he had met during World War II to campaign vigorously against the immediate development of land around Rooks Nest House. Fourteen years later the name Forster Country was coined by The Guardian newspaper and by 1976 the title was in common usage. The fact that it is now used in official documents and that to date there has been no development there is the achievement of Margaret Ashby and John Hepworth and the Friends of the Forster Country.

So what exactly faces us now? On a recent holiday in Dorset, my Sunday Telegraph's front page second headline read ‘27 towns to fight Green Belt erosion’ and of course Stevenage was one of the twenty-seven (along locally with Hemel Hempstead and Welwyn). We had all been aware for some time that our two local authorities, Stevenage Borough Council and North Herts District Council, had set up a joint working party ( SNAP : Stevenage and North Herts Action  Plan) to work together to see where our share of the imposed house building programme should occur.

We had also known that houses cannot be built without considering vital infrastructure such as water, sewage disposal, roads, and the problem of providing these was holding up the process. However, solutions seem to have been found and now draft plans are being pored over to see if agreement can be reached.

This information was the subject of a major article in The Comet (local) newspaper in mid-November. Having had sight of a blown-up version of the proposals, we can report both good and bad news. The good is that an area of land to be known as Forster Country is marked out between the two large areas of housing development proposed. The bad is that much of the area that we have tried to protect may be designated for building almost up to Graveley and certainly beyond the current Great Ashby area and will include a new road starting from the junction adjacent to Stevenage Garden Centre and running towards the intended location of the new Thomas Alleyne School.

So, despite the provision of a designated Forster Country "park", the threat of huge areas of our countryside being concreted over at some future date is real. Back in 1946 ‘Silkingrad’ was planned as a town for 60,000 people:  its whole design and infrastructure was based round that concept. Already the population has grown to 90,000 and the strain is showing so what will it be like if another 30,000 people come to join us?

Another important challenge from these new proposals comes from the fact that developers will find it much easier i.e. cheaper to build on the fields in north Stevenage than they would to build a tunnel under the A1 in order to develop West of Stevenage.

What can we do?

First, the plans are not yet determined so we can lobby, discuss and persuade, at the very least to get the Forster Country enlarged area.

Second, and I am not a party political animal, we should hope that a change of government to one whose current declared aims include scrapping all these development proposals, may be elected and stick to its stated intentions!

Third, we can keep as active as possible in using Forster Country and making its existence and benefits as widely known as possible and we have just had our four-minute slot on prime time TV in the BBC's The One Show!