Extinction Rebellion

Extinction Rebellion Norwich support all who wish to Save Thorpe Woodlands from the housing development which plans to turn this valued woodland into a building site. We are in a climate emergency and need to rethink our relationship to the non-human life that is going extinct around us. We need to rethink our relationship to woodland ecosystems instead of exploiting/destroying them for profit. In December we held a symbolic picnic in the woods with local residents and members of XR Norwich. We plan a meeting on January 18th 2020 2.30-4.30 at Dussindale Community Centre, Pound Lane, NR7 0SR. EVERYONE WHO CARES FOR OUR FUTURE is welcome. Love and Rage Barbara

Broadland Council Votes To Save Thorpe Woods

After a long process of consultation, environmental study and planning, the Area Action Plan (AAP) for development to the north east of Norwich is complete.
On the 10th of July Broadland District Council voted to adopt the Growth Triangle AAP.  As part of the AAP, Thorpe Woods are now recognised as being central to sustainability.  This recognition is a reflection of the strongly expressed views of environmental bodies including Norfolk Wildlife Trust, the considered opinion of Broadland's own ecological consultant and the overwhelming public oposition to building on the woods recorded in Broadlands’ public consultation.

4 years ago, the woodlands' owners, hoping to replace the trees with a profitable housing estate, presented a very different story. With the expensive help of jet setting planning guru Andres Duany they described the woodlands as redundant conifer plantation, fit only to become 'Belmore Park', 800 or more homes to replace the trees. There was no mention of course that the same woodlands were already designated as a County Wildlife Site by NWT, containing important habitats and rare plant species.

This misinformation worked for some time, to the extent that even BDC described this wonderful habitat as being largely conifer plantation. It has taken 4 years of persistence and hard work by core campaigners to prove that the would-be developers' descriptions were false. 
When the expensive Andres Duanys’ golden touch turned to manure, the owners, the Mayhew and Meath Baker families (Meet The Mayhews) hired The Matirx Partnership, a UK based high-flying development consultancy,  but their relationship was short lived. Eventually, Gail Mayhew, grew tired of pretending the plan of building on a County Wildlife Site was a good idea. She resorted to entrusting the onerous task of securing planning permission for Norwich's most unpopular ever development concept to a friend from Kensington & Chelsea, a certain Rock Fielding-Mellen, 

Mr Mellen and his company 'Socially Conscious Capital', specialising in difficult and unpopular planning applications, offered the Mayhews a 'no win, no fee' deal. The aristocratic Mellen and his old Etonian chums squandered prodigious sums of pocket money hiring compliant consultants and again proposed saving and improving the woodlands by  building on them, all this featured ,with no sense of irony, on a lovely website. But all to no avail.  At last it seems that Thorpe Woods and the fabulous biodiversity they support, have the future that they deserve.

The AAP must now stand for a minimum of 6 weeks, during which period interested parties may comment only on the soundness of its decision making process. Hence, there is still a threat to the woods, but it would have to be an outright attack on the whole process of local democracy and development planning. It is uncertain whether Socially Conscious Capital will appeal against BDC's decision, especially as the woodlands now constitute key Green Infrastructure within a development plan that provides more than adequate housing. But given the democratically oblivious and environmentally blind approach of SCC's 'No win, no fee' way of working, we must watch and wait.

This huge step towards saving a beautiful woodland area and wildlife habitat, from greed driven and completely needless development is something Broadland and Norwich can be proud of.

And it's thanks to the public, environmental bodies, Thorpe's BDC councillors and all who added their voice to our campaign, that in this case common sense for once might prevail.   

Thank you all!

Tawny owl young in Belmore wood

Video taken on a late evening, 4th June in Belmore wood. Followed the beautiful shrieks almost echoing as they seemingly replied to each other through the trees. Came across at least 3 young owls and filmed this one as it was on a lower limb and so a little closer to camera.
I've heard tawny owls and possibly other species of owl all across Thorpe Woodlands, photographing them before in west Racecourse.

Thorpe Woodlands decision June 10th

From dawn chorus to dragonflies and diversity, this short film is a final message to the councillors who have to decide on the future of these woodlands. 
On the 10th June Broadland District Council will be finalising their submission documents for the Area Action Plan (AAP) This document is going out for consultation shortly. The responses to the public consultation of early last year will also weigh in their decision.
 If Thorpe Woodlands are designated as 'Green Space' they will provide that and an environmentral investment for years to come. 
If you wish to make your views known to your councillor again or for the first time, please do so before that date.
Thank you to all those who have.

Dawn Chorus plus a deer Thorpe Woodlands 1st May

Recorded around dawn, again in the area recently proposed by Socially Conscious Capital for building development. We await news of the woodlands' inclusion or exclusion from the development area.

The Trojan Horse from Socially Conscious Capital.

Rock Fielding Mellen and associates under the banner of 'Socially Conscious Capital' want to build a housing estate on Thorpe Woodlands County Wildlife Site, and one as big and as profitable as they can get away with. 
In order to get their foot in the door, they've now decided to say ( although this figure is worthless as they refuse to give any guarantee) that they will build 380 houses, taking only a quarter or 50 acres of woodland (which in reality halves the largest habitat.)  

To help ease acceptance for this, they propose an "imaginative idea", a fountain of creativity which amounts basically to creating, from the remainder of Thorpe Woodlands, a new and differently named woodlands. On the face of it this doesn't seem like much of an offer or particularly creative, and in reality it's much worse!

Thorpe Woodlands already provides a beautiful woodland area open to the public and a habitat for wildlife which is locally exceptional, so nothing would be gained. On top of this, because SCC want us to believe that nature is neither "child" or "family friendly" they say that this County Wildlife Site will need tidying and cleaning. This will involve cleared areas, "clean and safe rides", cycle tracks, picnic tables, car park, access roads, a visitor centre and even retail! 

I presume there is no place in this new woodland for rides full of varied grasses, plant life and insects and certainly no place for mud.

All this sanitising and construction will of course, along with the management of a "new" public woodlands, cost money. 

There is no pledge on housing numbers for a reason. Firstly SCC will I'm sure be keen to cram in far more housing, and secondly SCC propose that the profit and a levy from the houses built will pay for and maintain the new "family friendly" "Racecourse Plantations" for all. 

If this doesn't turn out to be the case and once SCC have planning permission, they will most likely apply to build more houses, the excuse being to make their completely unnecessary and destructive scheme viable.

SCC largely dismiss the great environmental and public value that these woodlands already have, Rock Fielding referring to most of the woods as "only for the most intrepid" and is clearly of the opinion that nature should be clean and tidy. All this, while at the same time dishonestly proclaiming that they have environmental concerns at heart.

Picnic tables and car parks on ponds where newts presently breed or rare woodland pasture where glow worms display is no more than additional destruction on top of the building plans that should never be allowed. This building on mature Woodland in order to cash in on the NE Norwich development area is simply greed, and it is pursued with an assured and well funded arrogance against all advice and with no concern for the local environment or population. This attitude was never made clearer than by Rock Fieldings' outburst at a similarly unpopular development presentation SCC were fronting on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Faced with almost complete opposition and criticism of his plans by local people his response was "The estate will not be dictated to by the village!" no wonder then, Rock and SCCs approach here.

The Forestry Option for these woodlands is the forward thinking, environmentally sustainable future for this area of key green infrastructure and the future that the people of Norwich deserve.

If the landowners reject this, then at the least this great woodland must survive and no socially blind company should be allowed to deceive us in to accepting it's destruction.

It will be a sad day if local natural environment and a sustainable future is wasted because it doesn't create enough easy money for rich landowners. 

Below is what SCC call a "woodland improvement" plan including housing development (I've shaded it grey, they deceivingly coloured it green) Retail development and clean and tidy paths.

I've added/ highlighted some key points and truths here.

SHEER GREED

"Socially Conscious Capital". Rock Fielding-Mellen and his pals must have thought they were onto a winner when they came up with that name.  But like most things that sound too good to be true, so is SCC.

SCC's socially conscious credentials arise from anything but foundations of rock.  Mr Mellen (who prefers to be called Rock Fielding), in his day job as a member of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, has vigorously opposed the London Living Wage, which seeks to guarantee just what it says for the capital’s poorest workers.  Supporters of the Living Wage include Boris Johnson and most London-based MPs, yet Rock couldn't find it in his heart to go along with the concept of paying the poor a bit more.

Rock has recently demonstrated further the depth of his social consciousness by angrily telling the residents of a Scottish village to stop interfering with his family's plans.  The village of Longniddry is on an estate belonging to his family.  Not content with owning the village and surrounding countryside, they want to increase their fortune by building a large housing estate on meadowland.  The villagers understandably made their opposition clear in Rock's 'consultation'. However, despite receiving their clear response, Mellen was reported in the Edinburgh Evening News as saying: "The estate will not be dictated to by the village".

Innocent new arrivals at SCC's website would hardly guess that the main figure behind it had such haughty attitudes.  SCC's site oozes what they must believe to be charm. 

Their first (and only) project is called Racecourse Plantations - their new name for what began as 'Belmore Park' nearly 4 years ago.

Faced with the challenge of selling a thoroughly discredited concept to a savvy local population, SCC have followed in Gail Mayhew's footsteps and sought to divert attention from what they want to do onto what they think people will like.  And so, rather than admit that they want to build as many houses as they can get away with on the woods, in order to make as much money as possible,  they twist the truth inside out, like this:

"At Racecourse Plantations in Thorpe, we want to open up at least 150 acres of privately owned commercial forestry plantations as an accessible, family friendly woodland, recreational resource and haven for wildlife - for the benefit of the community and owned by the community"

What a lovely thing to want to do!  The only catch is: "To achieve this, we are proposing a development on the least sensitive areas of the site, which comprises no more than 25% of the area.  We can now announce that we are proposing a total of 380 quality homes in a woodland setting"

Why do they need to build around £130million worth of houses, you might ask. The reason; so that they can set aside enough money to create such wonderful facilities as visitor centres, shops, cafes, formal and informal play areas, car parks and access roads, and probably even talking fibreglass trees that tell children the names of the birds that used to live there. And none of this comes cheap. 

It is in SCC’s interests to make it seem that a lot of money would need spending to make the remainder of the woods fit for human presence, in order to justify building so many houses.  If they were to admit that all the woods need in order to remain a haven for wildlife and 'family friendly' is improvement to existing paths and perhaps some tree safety work here and there, they'd find it hard to justify building anything: it isn’t as if the owners couldn’t fund such works themselves, out of the profits from sustainable forestry.

This is perhaps the most exasperating aspect of the whole spiel.  SCC (like their predecessors) claim that in order to provide Norwich with continued enjoyment of the woodland they have enjoyed for generations, they need to raise money by building a few hundred houses.  You'd think these people were like the rest of us apart from having through fate found themselves landed with 200 acres of woodland they can't afford to keep.  Anyone who attended the owners' series of exhibitions in 2010 would certainly have thought this, because it is what they told us.  But the truth is very different.

Their family is one of the wealthiest in East Anglia. They own the 5000 acre Walsingham Estate, half a dozen villages and the famous Walsingham Abbey.  They also own, between them, other large woodlands in Norfolk, properties in London, Norwich and abroad.  If SCC's opening claim were true, ie: that they WANT to let the people of Norwich have a beautiful, wildlife-rich woodland with free access in perpetuity, they could simply make it happen.  They would hardly notice the difference on their annual balance sheets.  And they actually would have done something worthy of praise.

But these people want nothing other than to make yet more easy money, and if that means giving some of the woodland to the community in order to secure planning permission for building on part of it, they'll grudgingly do that.  SCC and their fancy PR consultants can twist words as much as they like but it won't alter reality.

Thorpe Woods will not benefit form having hundreds of houses built in them or from the remainder being sanitised. They are a superb ecological asset and will become even more important for their biodiversity as the march of 'progress' covers every field surrounding the city with bricks and tarmac.  Let's not be fooled by Selfish, Crafty Capitalists.

John Allaway