Homes for people - or short-eared owls?

PLANS for a massive housing development on the former British Aerospace aerodrome home of short-eared owls, barn owls, grasshopper warblers and skylarks have been slammed by critics.

And how the competing interests of wildlife, new homes and gravel extraction can be reconciled is, to say the least, unclear.

Owner Arlington Securities, a company formed from the property division of British Aerospace, has submitted a document to the public inquiry considering the East of England Regional Plan, suggesting 15,000 homes and an extension of the adjoining business park.

Pauline Holmes, senior conservation officer at the St Albans-based Hertfordshire and Middlesex Wildlife Trust, said: "Arlington have stated that Hatfield has no significant environmental constraints, but the Trust would disagree.

"To add Hatfield as a further growth area will further intensify the existing environmental pressures facing Hertfordshire.

"One of the most significant pressures faced by additional housing is the pressure for more water in a county that already is suffering from over-abstraction, leading to low water flows within our rivers and streams, affecting the wildlife these support.

"In addition, greater pressure for land-take would further add to the significant losses in biodiversity within the county.

"These are just two of the many environmental issues under pressure from additional housing and would, in the Trust's view, make this development unsustainable.

"The sustainability appraisal Arlington state has been undertaken for this new growth area has not gone through public consultation and therefore must be viewed as biased.

"The East of England's sustainability appraisal report already points out that the rate and intensity of economic and housing development which the region faces is intrinsically damaging to the environment and threatening many aspects of quality of life'.

"The Trust judges that adding a further growth area to Hertfordshire will further exacerbate these issues. The Trust also feels that a late submission such as this to the East of England plan puts a mockery on the planning system as it does not allow for formal consultation."

But, like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the Trust has not objected directly to the public inquiry considering the proposal.

Regional RSPB spokesman Colin Wilkinson said he knew the aerodrome area and was aware there were threatened birds there, but the society did not have resources to lodge a detailed formal objection.

He added that the main threat facing these species nationally was not loss of habitat to development, but modern farming methods.

When planning permission for the partial development was granted in 1999, Arlington agreed to create an environmental and recreation area at a cost of £1.3 million. The 1,700 newly-built homes, known as Salisbury Village, were sold with advertisements promising the area would be "teeming with wildlife".

The Salisbury Village official slogan even reads: "Forty minutes to London, ten minutes to St Albans, and two-and-a-half hours to catch a rainbow trout."

The St Albans Observer asked Arlington Securities the following questions: How does this fit in with Arlington's commitment, under the Hatfield Aerodrome Master Plan, to create some form of park or nature reserve there, involving a trust fund with a sum of £1.3 million?

And has any assessment or survey been made of the area's existing wildlife benefits?

The company responded: "We can confirm that at this stage we have made some outline representations to the Regional Spatial Strategy for the East of England, and these have been available to the public since February 2004. At such an early stage in the process, there are no specific details relating to the former Hatfield aerodrome.

"As our track record demonstrates, Arlington will of course work with the community and the local authorities as a key part of any next steps."

Over the last two years Arlington, and the two Salisbury Village building firms Bovis and Bryant, have failed to respond to several queries about the £1.3 million park from both the St Albans Observer and Welwyn Hatfield planning officer Simon Chivers.

The plan for thousands of homes on the former aerodrome has been blasted by MPs Anne Main and Grant Shapps, and Welwyn Hatfield Council, none of whom were aware of it until very recently.

The Beech Farm area, immediately north of the aerodrome, has been heavily worked by quarrying company Cemex, and much of it consists of active or redundant gravel pits.

Although some will be restored to farmland, Cemex is converting at least one large flooded pit into a nature reserve, and little-ringed plovers have already bred there.

There are many outstanding nature reserves which have been created from old gravel workings, notably Amwell, near Ware, about 20 miles from St Albans.

But there have been no discussions between Cemex and Arlington about dovetailing the wildlife benefits of the two adjacent sites.

The aerodrome itself has also been named as suitable for gravel extraction in the county council's Minerals Local Plan, but no actual planning applications for quarrying have been made.

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