Local campaigns

Farmland within the area of a proposed eco-town - Ford in Sussex, shown in red.

Eco-towns: branch campaigns

CPRE Bedfordshire 

Marston Vale and New Marston
Already the target of enormous numbers of applications from big developers currently being evaluated under the Mid Beds Site Allocations consultation for the emerging new Local Development Framework. An eco-town in addition to many of these other proposed developments would create one massive 'wall to wall' development.

According to CPRE Bedfordshire branch:

“We could end up with one long sprawl of ‘low-density interconnected housing’ between Bedford and Milton Keynes, something which CPRE has long feared. Developers have been heard to say that one could fit two Biggleswades into the Marston Vale area! Now this ‘vision’ is likely to materialise under the 'cloak' of an eco-town but not by any means an 'affordable' eco-town'. One long sprawl is hardly a 'sustainable' settlement and will destroy a good deal of important farmland and attractive tranquil landscape”

> CPRE Bedfordshire website: Eco-town for Bedfordshire?

Weston Otmoor’ included on a list of potential eco-town locations
As many as 15,000 homes could be built on 800 acres farmland between the village of Weston-on-the-Green, lying within Oxford’s Green Belt to the north of the city, and the A34/M40 junction, creating a town bigger than Bicester just 5 miles away.

> CPRE Oxfordshire website: Weston Otmoor’ included on a list of potential eco-town locations

Pennbury, Leicestershire
CPRE Leicestershire highlight concerns about the consultation process and the unsustainable location of the proposed eco-town.

> CPRE Leicestershire website: Proposed Pennbury eco-town

Middle Quinton, Warwickshire
The Government’s selection of the former Royal Engineer Depot at Long Marston for an ‘eco-town’ flies in the face of all the local factors that make the site unsuitable for major development and have done for years, says CPRE Warwickshire Branch.

News release | 3 April 2008
> CPRE Warwickshire website: Long Marston eco-town – “wholly damaging to the countryside”

Rossington, South Yorkshire
Fifteen thousand houses could be built around Rossington, close to the M18 motorway, if the village is selected as one of the final ten locations, but campaigners are concerned about the impacts of increased traffic and loss of Green Belt.

News release | 3 April 2008
> CPRE South Yorkshire website: Concern over shortlisting of South Yorkshire village as possible new eco-town