Garden cities best safeguard for Green Belt

 My daughter's boyfriend lives in Bicester and to visit him using public transport, she takes the X5 westwards from Bedford through Milton Keynes. The buses can only rarely stick to timetable and take almost two hours, without adding on travel time from Barton-le-Clay to Bedford. The Lib Dem vision to develop between three and five garden towns or cities along the Cambridge-Oxford axis would mean  investment in roads, trainlines and other infrastructure, slashing train journey times between Cambridge and Oxford from two and a half hours to 60 minutes - see http://www.libdems.org.uk/new_garden_city_train_link

Another benefit of this Lib Dem vision would be the building of 300,000 new homes in a co-ordinated and controlled way in this part of the country, starting with Bicester as pioneer.  It would thereby reduce the pressure to add hundreds and sometimes thousands of homes to every town and village here, which would turn villages into town and towns into cities indiscriminately, concreting over our Green Belt.

There should certainly be no large scale house building at Barton-le-Clay, sited as we are on the aquifer of the Barton Clay Vale between the chalk escarpment of the Chilterns to the south and the Greensand Ridge to the north, stretching up into Cambridgeshire..

The winter rains of 2014 saw water levels here rise in much of Barton to within six inches of the ground. When we flood it is through the water table rising, flooding gardens, patios and, in the worst cases, homes. Culverts on Manor Road brimmed with rainwater and homes at the juncture of Stuart Road and Windsor Road saw their gardens and patios flood. Building over more of the aquifer makes no sense given that the water table will rise again as rains fall. And with climate change, we are having wetter winters and warmer summers.

How is it for you in heavy rain? Does your garden become waterlogged or the patio flood? What do you think of the idea of having Bicester and other towns on the Cambridge-Oxford axis developed into garden cities like Letchworth and Welwyn? Janet Nunn wants to hear your views on janet.nunn@ntlworld.com  

Red alert for Green Belt

Central Beds Council withdrew its draft Gypsy and Traveller Plan in October, so our Green Belt on the western edge of the village is reprieved from development for now. 

Well done Bartonians, all our hard work to keep out Green Belt paid off. However, this is not the end: Central Beds must come forward with a revised plan next year – this will probably be after the general election and they have launched a 'call for sites' that will close 9th February, see www.centralbedfordshire.gov.uk/sites  So we must remain ready to protest again if they propose to build on our Green Belt.

Rumour has it that Central Beds is preparing to roll back the Green Belt on the eastern edge of our village, behind Manor Road under cover of the local development plan. Whether and how quickly that would extend the full length of the eastern side of Barton-le-Clay from Hexton Road to Higham Road is unclear and an obvious risk.

This information emerged in October, when Barton parish council held two community consultation sessions on the Neighbourhood Plan as its spring 2014 housing survey has identified an alleged need for 14 affordable homes in Barton-le-Clay. These would be built in conjunction with an unspecified number of 'market' houses. Central Beds is said to want to use the local development plan to push back the Green Belt on the eastern side of the village. As CBC Cllr Young confirmed at a  meeting on 6 November with representatives of the BRAG group, one developer still wants to build 550 homes here – this would have to be on our Green Belt.

Once the Green Belt is breached, the roll-back may prove impossible to contain, especially if money to build youth or community facilities sweeten the deal, as happened with the Grange Farm estate and development of the football facilities here some 20 years ago. We need to be alert and prepared to act if we wish to safeguard our Green Belt. The Parish Council's steering group five key themes are on display in the library.