Letter: GBC Needs to Understand the Importance of Food Production

Published on: 6 Apr, 2024
Updated on: 6 Apr, 2024

Corn being harvested in 2019 at “Three Farms Meadow” part of the Wisley Airfield site

From: Jules Cranwell

The government is so concerned about food security, that DEFRA has limited to 25 per cent the land farms can put aside for environmental/biodiversity purposes.

Yet, here in Guildford, we have a disastrous Local Plan that proposes to take 100 per cent of highly fertile farmland out of food production. This is at the three “strategic sites”: Blackwell Farm, Gosden Hill, and Three Farms Meadows [aka former Wisley Airfield] at Ockham.

It is now widely appreciated that we can no longer afford to import 60 per cent of our food. If we sacrifice farmland for developers’ profits, this percentage will only go up.

It is beyond time that GBC wakes up to the smell of coffee, and removes these sites from the Local Plan, without delay.

There was never a provision in the NPPF [National Planning Policy Framework] for supposed “housing need” to constitute an exceptional circumstance, to allow development on farmland.

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