Mansfield District Group
The Mansfield District Group of the Campaign to Protect Rural England works to help to protect the environment of Nottinghamshire - to preserve and enhance the Green Belt, woodlands, fields, trees, hedgerows and wildlife areas, and so keep Gedling a decent place in which to live, work and spend our leisure time.
Report for Mansfield District Group for 2007
We have been thin on the ground in the Mansfield area. Six years ago there were 3 active members, but we are now down to one! Fortunately we have other well supported conservation/environmental groups in the area – Friends of the Earth, RSPB and 3 long-standing heritage groups. The obvious move was to form an alliance with these groups and work closely together. This arrangement has been in place of 15 years, and for want of a more formal structure, I have become the “grapevine”.
We have a long-standing Preservation Committee bimonthly meeting at the Mansfield Council offices with the conservation officer and his staff, which proves very useful as a direct regular link to the local planners.
Very briefly, the issues we have been engaged in at a detailed level are:
- Misuse of public designated green space of development. Ongoing.
- Possible use of schools and playing fields for housing. Ongoing.
- The Mansfield & Ashfield Regeneration route (MARR) and all its attendant ramifications, including the various attempts to infill the green fields between it and the Mansfield southern urban boundary. Ongoing.
- A 15-year battle over the so called “prestigious” Penniment industrial development site to the northwest of Mansfield, which is to be set up on high quality agricultural land at the edge of the very large, purely residential area. In spite of now being given full planning status there is no known end user – even to the developer!
- Against a background of a receding natural population there is an increasing overstocking of housing. We do not need another house built here and the local planners go along with this. Yet developers, including agents of the County Authority, are incessantly pushing for more. New houses are taken up by commuters, who only sleep there. Thousands of homes are up for sale or empty.
- There is a large protest over the proposed new build West Notts. College and the sustainability of the whole project. The aim is to sell off the old site for housing – over 300 houses are planned! The proceeds of that sale will only be a minute part of the gap in funding that the project demands. Mansfield green land outside the urban boundary will be the victim. Ongoing.
- Inappropriate or lack of action on the restoration/recreation on the lowland healthland sites. Ongoing.
- Lack of action and knowledge about controlling ancient grassland/scrub/woodland sites on the Southern Magnesian Limestone strata. Ongoing.
- Lack of action on large derelict areas in the centre of Mansfield, for example the old General Hospital site and the abandoned Mansfield Brewery site. Ongoing.
- Principles of sustainability yet to be taken up and applied.
Tony Barton
Autumn 2007
The local contact for the Mansfield District Group is:
Tony Barton,
Burwells,
New Bound Mill Lane,
Pleasley,
Mansfield,
Nottingham NG19 7QA.
