It’s not surprising that residents are angry
WE are writing to provide the background to your article on the threat to land in Nanpantan (“Families shocked as popular green space is blocked off”).
For many years, the land at Leconfield Road was designated as an Open Space of Special Character by Charnwood Borough Council. This designation protected the land from development.
But in 2015, the incoming Local Plan removed the protection by stealth. There was no public consultation on this matter. Not one of our residents was aware of the change until the site was placed in the draft of the Local Plan as a site for development in 2019.
With the change from protected open space to a site for development taking place behind the backs of residents, can anyone be surprised how we have now responded when threatened with losing this land?
There were 100 pages of responses relating to this land in the first Local Plan consultation. More than 250 residents protested in the field last summer (Leicester Mercury, September 5, 2020) and more than 700 signed a petition against development.
By head of population, Nanpantan has the least green space in Charnwood. We have just over 20 per cent of the space specified by the council, a shortfall of 5.6 hectares.
With 73 hectares of greenfield land in our ward allocated in the forthcoming Local Plan to the Loughborough Science and Enterprise Park, the 1.4 hectares at Leconfield Road is the last area of land available that can reduce our open space shortfall.
That this one last area is now under threat, one that should be protected open space, is a disgraceful dereliction of the duty of care that the council should have to the health and wellbeing of residents.
In announcing the new Local Plan in June, the council heralded its environmental credentials. The council understood it would not be in keeping with its environmental objectives to keep ecologically sensitive land such as Leconfield Road in the Local Plan and it was removed as a site for development. In the Local Plan, the council also found that Leconfield Road meets the criteria to become a Local Green Space, demonstrating that this land should still be open space and never have lost such protection.
The window of opportunity while the land has accidentally (we assume) and temporarily lost its protection as open space, has of course, not been missed by developers. There is now an ominous threat of a planning application.
If the council determines in its Local Plan that land is environmentally sensitive and should not be developed, surely when the authority assesses a planning application the outcome should be the same?
It is time for Charnwood Borough Council to make it clear it will refuse any planning application at Leconfield Road and instead act in favour of residents and the planet.
Nanpantan Ward Residents’ Group