'The council thought it was a useless bit of scrubland and nobody would care, but we knew different': David vs Goliath in our green and pleasant land

Britain is facing its biggest surge in housing development since the 1970s, with 1.5 million new homes due to be built by 2029 and the ‘biggest council house building programme since the post-war period’ announced by Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

The mantra, regularly quoted by former Housing Secretary Steve Reed, is ‘build, baby, build’; seven new towns are proposed and, to facilitate this revolution, the Government has slashed red tape. Major infrastructure-project decisions have been removed from local-authority control and, at a smaller scale, planning committees are being bypassed in many cases.

The need for new homes is clear. Groups such as the Rural Services Network and Countryside Alliance have long warned that a shortage of affordable housing leaves rural towns and villages dominated by the well off and retired. Building 370,000 homes a year could allow young people and key workers to stay in rural areas. Local authorities also need to conform to mandatory housing targets, and this may mean more rural communities mobilising to fight inappropriate developments foisted upon them.

Packsaddle Fields near Frome is an eight-acre patch of former farmland that sat untouched in Somerset County Council’s land bank for 50-plus years. Originally earmarked for a school in 1973, the plan was dropped and the site had been left to its own devices.

‘It’s a really special place, with old hedgerows and tiny fields,’ said Janet Hague of People for Packsaddle. ‘Generations have used it and, when we heard in 2022 that the county wanted to sell it for development, we put out a call to try to understand local feeling. The council thought it was a useless bit of scrubland and nobody would care, but we knew different.’ The group gathered testimony from residents who love the fields — a green refuge bordered on three sides by housing — and secured Asset of Community Value (ACV) status in 2023. That same year, Somerset County Council recommended approval for a plan by LiveWest to build 74 houses and a specialist home for disabled children on Packsaddle, but the planning committee refused it after receiving in excess of 260 objections.

In August 2025, People For Packsaddle had to hire a barrister and fight a planning inquiry. They won and thought that was the end of the fight. However, this March, Somerset Council removed the land’s permissive access and put up temporary fencing to keep out local people. A council statement said that it was obliged under an Option Agreement to help the developer pursue planning permission or any appeal, including closing the permissive path and fencing the public footpath. Failure to do so, it said, could expose the council to legal action.

A survey conducted after the fencing went up found that 95% of respondents felt it had harmed community connection and their physical and mental wellbeing. ‘We’ve applied for a certificate of lawful use because we can prove people have used the land for more than 50 years,’ said Hague. ‘We fight on.’

Other campaigners who beat the developers only to face another threat include Woodhall, Faskine and Palacecraig Conservation Group (WFPCG), which has been protecting a mile-square area of green-belt land near Calderbank, North Lanarkshire, for a decade. In 2014, an application was made to build 1,000 homes, business premises and other infrastructure on the land that includes ancient woodland, the remains of the Woodhall and Faskine estates, old hedgerows and former canal ways that form a wildlife corridor. WFPCG fought and prevailed over that application and then an appeal earlier this year, but now fears the land is at risk of becoming subsumed into Scotland’s only AI growth zone.

‘It’s by the M8 and surrounded by housing. Everyone was told it was urban scrapland because it was mined a couple of hundred years ago, but Nature has totally reclaimed it,’ said Diane Davidson of WFPCG. The group mounted organised resistance — packed public meetings, a 6,000-strong Facebook community and volunteers leafleting across Calderbank. When the application reached the council, Davidson coordinated 18 speakers, a strategy that helped to secure victory. ‘We won that, but now we must start again,’ she notes.

Local concern now centres on the land housing potential solar arrays and other infrastructure linked to the expansion of the DataVita data centre. Developers have already bought adjoining land, although no new planning applications have been submitted. ‘Why should we have to do this?’ questions Davidson. ‘I feel totally let down by the system. Why should small community groups be left to fight for these sites? It’s exhausting.’

Running a campaign takes over people’s lives, but that is the price they must pay if they want to win, say Janine Lee and Dr Guy Esnouf who defeated a 10,000-home project that would have swallowed their Warwickshire villages. Wilmcote (home to Mary Arden’s Farm, Shakespeare’s maternal home) has 550 houses; nearby Bearley (where actor Richard Griffiths lived) only 320. ‘It would have been an 800% increase for Wilmcote,’ said Lee, who is now parish chair and a district councillor.

A year ago, they separately spotted the initiative in the South Warwickshire local plan and, finding their respective parish councils unaware, took matters into their own hands, canvassing local views and joining forces last October as the Bearley Wilmcote Action Group. ‘I told the parish council that we needed a public meeting,’ said Lee. ‘About 200 people came, including Dr Esnouf, and, when it seemed clear the parish wasn’t going to do anything, I took action.’ A similar meeting in Dr Esnouf’s village showed 97% opposition to the plan. ‘The first thing you need to do is find out if you have support,’ said Dr Esnouf. ‘It’s no good if it’s only a few individuals.’

Because the village demographic tended to be somewhat elderly, the pair ran sessions to help people make online consultation submissions. ‘I also ran a petition in the pub for those who couldn’t manage online and we knocked on doors to get responses from the elderly people who couldn’t even manage that,’ said Lee. ‘We had a march in November and I got the subject out to the press.’

‘My background is research,’ said Dr Esnouf. ‘We exposed the fact that it was not a well-planned site. It was not driven by Stratford District Council, but rather by the developer. The district had a need to build a certain number of houses and the developer offered them that, but it wasn’t appropriate or sustainable. It’s been hard work, but we’re now at the end of our fight. Bearley and Wilmcote are no longer on the list of suitable places for these houses.'

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe