Fantastic news from the Woodland Trust. I really hope they achieve their target and make St Albans, the native woodland focus for the United Kingdom.

It is so good to hear of the hard work and planning of highly motivated people. True vision! Congratulations for getting to this stage. It will take a couple of generations to finally see the full glory of what they propose. That’s what I call forward planning.

I can only hope that our local planning Development Plan Framework in progress now, planning for the future of our district will take into account all our needs and not just focus on throwing up housing covering the rest of the greenbelt. Of course we need affordable housing, but do we really need the numbers Go East tells us we do?

England (please note) has lost half its ancient woodland since the 1930s for a variety of reasons but of course including development. Take a moment to think about that fact, and ask the decision makers vision they have for this city and district. I bet it isn’t half as coherent as this project.

Oh Vanessa! Come off it. You know as well as I do that the idea that housing will cover the rest of the green belt is nonsense used and abused by opportunist politicians. I don’t need to quote facts and figures at you, the readers know there is ample room for an ancient woodland bigger than Sherwood Forest to be planted within our county that does not even register in the size and scale of the green belt that surrounds us. Do you know what saved our countryside from commercial speculative development that happened upwards of the 1930s? That’s right, it was the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act brought in under a Labour government. Now I would ask you to consider that as food for thought.

Oh Martin I really thought better of you! From what I recall you and I (although I am much older than you) were raised very near the city hospital. I believe we were both very lucky to be born in such a wonderful city and very fortunate to be able to stay here when so many, of at least my contemporaries were forced to leave St Albans due to the cost of housing. Therefore I care passionately about those born and who work here to be able to afford to live here.

What I question is the sheer number of homes we are being told, not asked, to build here and how that number was calculated. It certainly is way beyond organic growth. We have been given a target that must be met by 2021, and then what; will you be prepared to stop there? If we are forced to keep growing at the same rate for the next 80 years – the time frame I was referring to above then I do fear for great swathes of the greenbelt.

As for you party political point, which greatly disappointed me, on the Town and County Planning Act - it didn’t save us nationally from the nightmare concrete eyesores of the 1960s and 70s did it, when we had the last great housing stratagem. Where rows and rows of terraced houses were pulled down and high rise tower blocks built in their place. My Mum, Dad and me narrowly avoided the nightmare of living in one of those blocks of boxes.

Whilst you were preparing your repost to me last night I was, as a resident, observing the district councils Planning Policy Advisory Panel meeting hearing that the government have yet again moved the goal posts with regard the Development Plan Framework. It seems to me that much of the new planning regime is quite ludicrous. We are to have green wedges instead of greenbelt, and, as Go East explained at another meeting I attended about a year ago, with many other residents, the wedges we will lose here near St Albans might be negated by a wedge or two in Norfolk.

I think that having a large forest in St Albans is wonderful. I do hope that the Woodland Trust will achieve everything that they want to!

Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of important details like who created the green belt and for what reason and why it has doubled in size over the last 20 years. Vanessa, it is a political entity. Every time casual phrases are uttered about “covering” or even worse “concreting” over it, I want to scream. The political usage of such terms, the fear that is created emotionally masks all logic and reason and is simply not true. The debate which should be about how we are going to provide homes for future generations of people like you and me turns into a farce where preserving our distinctive character means allowing a multitude of three bedroom houses to be built in your neighbours back garden without adequate parking! I have visited more people objecting to such planning applications than any other subject during my time on the council. The sheer misery and anxiety that they cause makes me think differently about alternatives. This is not something that may happen at some dim and distant point in the future. It is happening today. Now, you can believe that people are not living longer, that new households are not forming at a higher rate than ever before and that there hasn’t been a massive under investment in housing for decades. You can, but please beware that if you do then you may well find yourself in the same camp as King Canute.

Martin - I really don’t have the time to carry this on, but I will fight the corner for the greenbelt as long as I have to. A camp follower of King Canute is one of the gentler nick names I am acquiring. It seems I am tougher than the granite in St Peter’s Street!

You haven’t really addressed my question on how these housing figures were arrived at. Some vague reference to living longer is just that – vague. Go East’s current numbers of 508,000 new homes by 2021 in the Eastern region are just not viable. 83,000 new homes in Hertfordshire, 7,200 in St Albans District by 2021 is ludicrous and crazy target, with the threat of similar growth after that.

I have observed council meetings where planners struggle to find sites that prevent coalescence between towns, villages and hamlets. They can’t square the circle and have my sympathy.

Where is the infrastructure to support all this growth? What will our quality of life be if the proposed rail freight interchange, which is hanging over us like the sword of Damocles, is approved by the Secretary of States in October? No wonder people are angry.

I really thought it was you who wrote to the newspapers not that long ago, advocating calling gardens brownfield land, thus encouraging planning applications to build on them – it must have been someone else with the same name! I empathise will fellow residents who are enduring housing developments being thrown up next to their homes as I am suffering the same plight.

I think you had better go for a walk in the county and visit our magnificent chalk streams we have in this area, before they are abstracted to destruction to provide water for all these new homes you are demanding, and scream with frustration as fewer and fewer people share you views now they are seeing the hellish reality.

Yes, thanks to the NHS we could continue this thread for many years to come. My letter published in the local newspapers said completely the opposite of what you are suggesting. I’m a bit of a fisherman on the quiet V, have been since the day my Dad introduced me to it so I’m familiar with more than just the chalk streams around our City. I know it is beyond the wit of our Council to deliver a cinema but it is not beyond our best engineers and planners to address the water and infrastructure issues you mention. The target number of homes is achieved independently as they have been since the Tories first introduced them. Perhaps you need to read more about important social and demographic changes that are taking place and the lack of investment in housing stretching back over the decades? Hellish reality? Only by doing nothing to alleviate the problems that we are storing up for ourselves and future generations will that come into being.

Delivering a cinema! What has that go to do with it? That’s it Martin, you going off on a tangent now and have therefore ended any reasonable focused discussion on the greenbelt and failed to convince me to change my mind with compelling actual facts.

Now I feel you have started to take advantage of my willingness to debate, for the allure of bit of free “party political” publicity, which I won’t play a part. I feel you have not only let me down, but more importantly the issue we had been talking about.

Woodland Trust’s outdated agenda

I was interested to read that the Woodland Trust intends to buy 850 acres of land at Sandridge in Hertfordshire for £8.5m to plant native trees and is comparing it as our equivalent of the rain forest. It then goes on to say how much it will benefit the 2 million people who live within 15 miles of the site as a large and accessible space for recreational purposes to where the majority will probably drive their cars. This seems little short of urbanising the countryside by the back door, at a time when it should be important for conservationists to seek to reduce the human impact.

Has no one told these people, who are supposed to be conservationists, that it is the increase in the human footprint that is damaging the rain forests and the planet at large, and that in the increasing global food shortage arable land could be better used for producing food at reasonable cost.

It seems the Woodland Trust is more concerned about extending its empire at the public’s expense, than considering the environmental, economic and even social damage of its now outdated agenda.

It is also my experience that once the Trust buys woodland, generally and mainly with other people’s money, it moves on to its next development, with little regard for countering anti-social behaviour and monitoring for basic maintenance.

Perhaps it is time for the Woodland Trust to realise that quality of woodland is much more desirable than quantity in terms of acreage.

Woodland Trust’s outdated agenda

I was interested to read that the Woodland Trust intends to buy 850 acres of land at Sandridge in Hertfordshire for £8.5m to plant native trees and is comparing it as our equivalent of the rain forest. It then goes on to say how much it will benefit the 2 million people who live within 15 miles of the site as a large and accessible space for recreational purposes to where the majority will probably drive their cars.

Has no one told these people, who are supposed to be conservationists, that it is the increase in the human footprint that is damaging the rain forests and the planet at large, and that in the increasing global food shortage arable land could be better used for producing food at reasonable cost.

It seems the Woodland Trust is more concerned about extending its empire at the public’s expense, than considering the environmental, economic and even social damage of its now outdated agenda.

It is also my experience that once the Trust buys woodland, generally and mainly with other people’s money, it moves on to its next development, with little regard for countering anti-social behaviour and monitoring for basic maintenance.

Perhaps it is time for the Woodland Trust to realise that quality of woodland is much more desirable than quantity in terms of acreage.

Sounds as though the land owners want to make some money, who owns the land, the Salvation Army? If they can't build on it, why not sell it at an inflated price to the Woodland Trust? Anyway once established, what comes next, visitor centre, interpretation complex, leisure activities, car park ......?call me cynical, but Instead of on open productive farmland, I think the woodland should better on worked out unrestored gravel pits, something St Albans has a lot of.

The plan of the Woodland Trust to turn ancient unforested land north of Sandridge into forest raises many questions about the sustainability of the proposed forest.

Having checked the website of the Woodland Trust, I can see no indication of how - or whether - the forest is going to be managed after its 12 years maturity, so there is no indication of what permanent annual expenditure - if any - the forest will require to keep it.

Moreover, the website carries no due diligence on the effects of the proposed forest.

It looks set to become the taxpayers' problem within 15-20 years.

In 2007, the Woodland Trust received about 13.2% of its gross income from grants - i.e. £3.697m - of which the majority comes from a variety of government- or parliament-controlle
d bodies, funded by the taxpayer. The Heritage Lottery Fund, the Forestry Commission, local authorities (probably county councils for the most part, they have the least democratic visibility), Department for Communities etc, European structural funds, Department of Environment etc, Rural Payments Agency and so on all contribute to the income of the Trust.

So the taxpayers of St Albans are already substantially paying for the forest, even before it has started.

According to a leaflet from The Woodland Trust that local residents recently received, the Trust seeks to raise £100,000 from its local appeal. For the year ending 31 March 2007, St Albans District had 50,322 dwellings. A contribution from each taxpayer towards the £100,000 would thus be as follows: band A £1.11, B £1.30, C £1.48, D £1.67, E £2.04, F £2.41, G £2.78 and H £3.34.

Those numbers are small, but they represent only the £100,000 opening gambit. Because the Woodland Trust has no analysis of future costs, risks and externalities, it is impossible to gauge the permanent on-going cost that the Trust would somehow need to fund.

Until we know more about how the proposed financing of the forest's management, maintenance and protection over the next 20 years (at least), we should remain sceptical about the sustainability of the forest. I would like to see credible numbers that stand up to due diligence.

There are many reasons to support the project, ranging from a symbolic atonement for climate change to providing biodiversity that we need for our everyday lives (for example, a shortage of bees or other insect pollenators means the price of bread goes up. Yes, seriously. It does).

But if climate change has taught us anything, it is that we must measure every aspect of a man-made idea to ensure its sustainability. Any idea that simply sounds like a "jolly good idea" or "broadly right in principle" should be immediately suspect. Sustainability includes aspects environmental, economic and financial. All three must substantially prove sustainability for the proposal to count as sustainable.

A failure in any one of these aspects guarantees non-sustainability, meaning that we will have wasted resources in building something flawed that simply creates future problems (that we are too lazy to think about in the present). For this proposed forest, potential future problems will range from the effect on the local water supply to the incidence (or risk) of insect-bourne diseases not yet present in the UK. The planet is still going to warm up. Having used resources planting the forest and having spent as-yet unforecasted resources on maintaining the forest, will we in the future find that our cost of delivering water to local residents increases, or that the cost of more accessible medical treatments (once thought a preserve of exotic holidays) increases?

As the forest will be substantially a public good, how do we fund these likely future costs? Taxation? Exactly: that's my point. The population will continue to age over the next 20 years, meaning that there will be fewer and fewer people of working age paying tax to feed a state that continues to grow and spend and grow and spend more. There will be less private cash to bequeath to the Woodland Trust, making it more reliant upon grant funding from the state. A vicious, greedy, state-centric circle, a reality far removed from what you thought would be a "jolly good idea".

The solution is to press the Woodland Trust repeatedly until the numbers fall out. I would like the Trust can prove the environmental, economic and financial sustainability of the forest - without reliance upon any taxpayer or grant-issuing body - and show legal steps to entrench its sustainability, independent from government.

Kind regards

Martin Thornhill
St Albans Taxpayers Alliance