'It's criminal': United front in bid to save wood from bulldozer - The Redditch Standard

'It's criminal': United front in bid to save wood from bulldozer

Redditch Editorial 18th Mar, 2021   0

CROSS party and cross border, campaigners are uniting to fight the Morris Homes development of 265 new homes in ‘Mappleborough Woods’.

Residents in Winyates Green, in Redditch, and their Conservative Borough Councillor Anthony Lovell, have joined with Mappleborough Green residents in Warwickshire and Stratford District Liberal Democrat Councillor Peter Hencher-Serafin to oppose the plans.

Their action comes in a desperate bid to halt the development which will straddle Redditch borough and Stratford district.

“I’m feeling more and more angry about this – and despondent,” said Coun Lovell, portfolio holder for climate change on Redditch Borough Council.




“What they are proposing is a crime. We are basically living through a mass extinction of our wildlife and putting up a few bat boxes won’t stop it.

“It’s just all wrong. This should never have been put on the town plan – you just need to look and see how out natural environment is being depleted. We need to change our 20th century ways.”


Mappleborough Green Parish Councillor Maureen Berry added: “According to the architects, they have been in consultation with Stratford and Redditch since 2013.

“Yet the first we heard of it was in February 2021 and that was only because we found out through Redditch.

“We have been asking for the reports that have been done in consultation for the site allocation but instead of being forthcoming we are being kept totally in the dark.

“Yet another space for wildlife is being destroyed and all for economic gain.”

Coun Hencher-Serafin said: “We know covenants were put on the land in 2008 and I have been trying to find out what has happened to them but keep coming up against a brick wall.

“We’re not only trying to save a woodland and all its wildlife here but also keeping a barrier between Redditch Mappleborough Green because if we don’t all we’ll have is urban sprawl.

“There’s no infrastructure, no schools, and public transport is pitiful.

Trees are the lungs of the planet and cutting down trees to build homes is totally against the climate emergency.”

Morris Homes is part of Homes England an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government.

Homes England owns other stretches of land in the area, stretching down to The Boot Inn on the A435 towards Studley.

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