Protesters ‘mourn’ green belt loss as 17,000 homes are planned
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgjn6v2wyj4o
Posted by Anony_mouse202
Protesters ‘mourn’ green belt loss as 17,000 homes are planned
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgjn6v2wyj4o
Posted by Anony_mouse202
28 Comments
[deleted]
Wah wah. The Sevenoaks greenbelt is not particularly pretty agricultural land and a thousand homes a year is really not very many. Brownfield and filling the tiny number of empty properties wouldn’t even scratch the surface of what’s needed.
Not this time NIMBYs.
If you look at a satellite image of the area, you’ll see how ridiculous this is.
They’re surrounded by practically endless farmland. Zooming out; the town gets lost in the trees while you can still see individual fields.
approximately 10% of all the land in England is currently built on
at this point NIMBYs just have to get over it, I’m afraid
This is one of the ticking time bombs Polanski has with the Green Party, the NIMBYs.
Younger Green voters want more cheap housing, including social housing, NIMBYs don’t want that.
Younger Green voters are pro-renewable energy, NIMBYs don’t want pylons, solar or wind power.
Edit: for those hitting downvote before reaching for their high strength copium tablets, here’s an article from October 2025, a month after he was elected party leader:
[https://shepwaygreenparty.com/greens-oppose-large-scale-solar-on-romney-marsh/](https://shepwaygreenparty.com/greens-oppose-large-scale-solar-on-romney-marsh/)
Can’t they just wank over a different bit of the greenbelt?
Green belts have nothing to do with the environment btw they were introduced in the 40s before there was any concern over the environment.
Absolutely nothing to do with protecting the value of the £2m house bought for 50k of course.
Sevenoaks is one of the places where it makes the most sense to build, green belt or not.
It’s on a train line served by very frequent trains, and has lots of land around an existing centre with schools, doctors, etc.
Walk out of Sevenoaks train station, the first thing you see is an eyesore, derelict site with an actual boarded up hole in the ground. It’s looked like that for over a decade.
The town is pretty low rise, you can find single family homes right next to the train station. To be fair there’s apartments in the area as well, but they should allow more.
Insanity. Brownfield sites only, and there are plenty of them around. This will be based on where the developer can make most money.
I mean I just hope the new builds and the estates don’t look like shit and stick out like a sore thumb. Poor pedestrian access, more cars, the promised busses never materializing.
We need houses and a lot desperately but I wonder if we will look back the way many Americans often look at their own suburbs and thinks “damn what the hell where we thinking”.
It’s not like high density city centre brownfield redevelopment is constantly objected to & takes years to get approval (if lucky), right? Well the choice is simple, building up or out.
I don’t see the appeal of living far into the green belt for anyone working in London. Surely they’d rather live further in and close to a tube station? We don’t need to build out when we can build up.
I’ve seen the Sevenoaks housing plan and as usual, it involves mostly building houses and on green/grey belt because that’s what the developers want to maximise profits. There is not enough accessible/affordable properties like flats in the towns. There are plenty of spaces in the main Kentish towns to build more condensed housing – this would reinvigorate the high streets and make the most of existing facilities. Most other countries build apartments in the towns but in this country, developers want to build cheap 3 bed semis on green land.
It’s reasonable and a good site to do so. Can’t be wanting economy and stability but don’t want to build. Choose one and stick with it.
What about the carbon footprint issue too, which I thought we were still being directed to care about, when it’s convenient
“Sevenoaks District Council (SDC) was discussing plans to build more than 17,000 homes and a rugby stadium in the area by 2042 on Tuesday evening.”
I read that as they’ve got 3.5 days to get these built by 8:42pm (2042) this coming Tuesday. That would be quick!
I’m not a left wing cretin but fck these people.
Too many people in this country coming in yet we can’t build houses. Fck them.
Jesus fucking Christ, if we don’t build any houses there are people bitching about it and if we do, we still have people bitching about it.
The housing system is designed to protect existing landowners and maintain high property prices. That’s why the system, which the BBC help to uphold, is now showing this protest.
I mourn that it’s only 17000. We can do better than that.
No, the greenbelt was created for a reason, we need less people not more houses.
It all hinges on what you want to prioritise – homes for squirrels or for people. Well, if you had to choose,which would it be?
I’m all for building high rises in favour of preserving more land for nature
It depends. If these houses are getting built on monoculture farm fields that dont back on to ancient woodlands or delicate habitats then its good news. If they are going to flatten woodland, drain wetlands, stick 3000 hours next to delicate habitats meaning that habitat will ve destroyed then obviously that is extremely bad news
But as always the issue is not we dont have enough houses. The issue is people owning second and more houses, holiday homes, companies buying up hundreds of new builds to rent out.
There has been 10s of thousands of new homes built. Has the price of houses come down? Nope not at all.
Building more houses does one thing. Fills the pockets of the ultra rich developers. Maybe if the ultra rich paid their workers a fair wage then people could afford houses
These people likely also oppose stuff built in town not on greenbelt either.
Anyway like others said we need to build new stuff denser especially when there’s a station nearby. It’s such a waste when we actually have a pretty massive bit of land being built on nearish to a station but then it ends up being just a few hundred low density homes homes. Each having 2+ car parking spaces which then adds another 1,000 cars to the local roads which already have traffic and high maintenance costs and public transport is in viable due to low density.
Same thing is kind of happening with any of these new towns happening soon.
We should find a few areas next to a rail line not too far from a city and with nothing around but farmland for ages. Then just build a basic station there and then highish density housing for 2km x 2km around the station. Could get like 40,000 homes there with the tallest building being 6 floors and 1/3rd of it being parks and green areas. Every point will be within 10 mins walk of the station and schools and doctors etc.
This is kind of happening near me. 1.6km x 1.6km bit of land next to a rail line. 20 mins to Central London from that part of the rail line if a basic station was there. But they’re not adding a station and I think it’s gonna be 4,000 csr dependant homes. By the time it’s done we’ll have already outgrown the 4,000 homes needed there.
Or we could just not accept a cities worth of immigrants each year.
Wild thinking, I know.
It’s not that hard to try and use a little empathy and understand why people are pissed off, rather than simply moaning about NIMBYism.
We only need a massive amount of additional housing stock because of mass immigration driving the population up.
People have voted consistently for parties promising to reduce immigration at general elections for well over a decade.
Now in order to provide housing to accommodate the additional people imported against the electorate’s will, their local area is being paved over, directly worsening their lives to accommodate choices they never wanted to begin with.
Ofc people are pissed off.