The Council’s original plan, back in January 2019, threatened the deletion of Green Belt at 14 sites across the borough. These included two sites in Duffield, where 245 houses were to be built. A third site on Hazelwood road has since been added. This development would have had a strong negative effect on the village.
Impact on the village
The proposed number of new houses would have increased the village population by around a thousand – a 20% increase on the present figure.
This would have put considerable pressure on our schools, doctors’ surgeries and already congested roads, as well as destroying forever our green space, public footpaths and wildlife habitats, not to mention valuable farmland.
Recognising the danger this posed to village life, a group of concerned residents began to organise a campaign to challenge the development – eventually, they formed the Save Duffield Green Belt group.
Response
The Group responded to the Council’s 2019 consultation and you can browse the documents we submitted.
Similar groups were organised across the Borough and pressure was put on local politicians to remove the green belt sites from the local development plan.
Labour took control of the Borough Council in May 2019, primarily due to its pledge to remove green belt sites from the Local Plan. With the support of the Green Party, Labour ditched the Plan and the Conservatives subsequently came on board by also committing not to build on the green belt.
A further consultation on where new development should be sited (the spatial strategy options) took place last year (2021) in preparation for the new Local Plan.
Why is the threat to our green belt still high?
Although the consultation showed overwhelming support by Amber Valley residents for protecting the green belt from building; it also showed that developers outside the borough are still lobbying for the right to develop these sites.
AVBC is also under a lot of pressure to meet its housing quota. We have no guarantee, therefore, that the new Local Plan currently being developed by the Council will not call for a deletion of green belt land.
Even if these sites do not appear in the Local Plan in June, there is a strong possibility that they will be reinstated at a later stage of the review and approval process.
Save Duffield Green Belt 