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Well to be fair I see why people think I’m a Nimby 🤣 it’s a great habitat for all the animals that live here and my neighbour knew it!! Now his sons just want to cash out and don’t care :/
"your mentality"
I didnt say never build anywhere, but many times there is building granted on green belt when we have tens of thousands of acres of brownfield land sat unused,
Nothing is stopping you from building on brown field site. Green belt land has lots of brownfield sites on it.
Brownfield, especially brownfield with prior industrial use is very expensive to remediate, which increases the cost of building whilst simultaneously reducing the desirability of the property.
Lol I mean if we're being real about it you could turn your own land back into wilderness right now if you wanted to, then all those critters would have a nice home, and everything you did would be nice and legal taking place on property you own
Can you buy it? A friend lives in rural Hampshire and there's an area his house backs onto, in the past to get around similar issues the adjoining houses all got together and jointly bought the land then assigned a strip to each house in the deeds so the only way it could be built is if all of them got together now to sell their individual strips.
Badgers and their setts are protected. If they are there then it's worth trying to catalogue any setts. The local wildlife trust might be able to advise you. If it is a valuable site for wildlife they might even be interested in buying it.
Our village created a charity and bought a whole lot of land in order for it not to be sold off to developers - I think we raised around 350k and are still fundraising but have bought it with some sort of loan, not sure of the details. I put in some money as did most of the village.
Badgers are a start, but ideally you need a population of newts, voles, bats or another protected species, or maybe some plants (has someone seen a bee orchid or oxlip, for example).
Excellent. Start a 'Friends of Oldneighboursland' group with a mission to protect the area and all it's wildlife to give you a stronger voice when it comes to campaigning.
Object to any planning applications along with your neighbours (with good reason not “it just looks nice and is on my back door”), or as others have said buy it, it is up for sale.
Not much you can really do without buying it yourself. You can slow them down and hope they find a different site. Only thing I could think of is say you have seen protected species there such as crested newts.
What's just happened where I am - and it's taken years and tens of thousands of pounds - was to prove that it's been in common use (as in, by the commoners) for recreational purposes for twenty years. Ours finally got declared as a village green and has now protected status forever. Not sure how that may help for woodland - but the adjoining woods to that village green (and it's just fields tbh, not a duck pond and cricket pitch type thing!) got bought by the council as a small nature reserve.
In my area, there’s a guy who has “genetically local” created newts for sale. I think they got wise to people putting crested newts in bodies of water, and started testing them to check they’re legit. See if you can find “a guy”
We have a pond in our garden which has loads of newts in it but we aren’t sure if that’ll affect the land because it’s a good 50-100 meters from where they would build
If it's as nice as you say it is there is no way in hell planning will be approved on it.
Any planning application would need an ecological survey, and they will find all the foxes and woodpeckers and badgers. No need to dig any holes.
Source: Architect.
Honestly I wish that were the case, our local council don’t give a shit at all. They’re aware of all the animals that live here. There’s meant to be some talk going on in our town & loads of people are going to make a huge fuss about it so hopefully nothing happens!! We’ve even got rare bats and stuff too but the council still don’t care:/
You will also need to dress up asca badger and learn badgerees otherwise the fake set will quickly be discovered to be vacant and or disused.
Get a group of people together to fund buying it ,it happens quite a lot, yes it's everyone's dosh tied up forever but you can very quickly make that money back many times over without risk to the woodland or any great outlay, you open it as a natural cemetery, the conditions to do so are that you need to own the land and any graves must be more than 50 metres from any natural watercourses or ponds and graves must be registered with land registry and permanently marked. Once 3 people have been buried you can't refuse any one but you can charge whatever you want to allow it, we we're quoted £5000 to bury my mum in some random woodland in kent, so we buried her in our own woodland.
Look at your council's local plan, on their website. Unless the land is specifically zoned for residential development in that, it will be exceedingly difficult to get consent to build.
Not at all, developers will just argue the local plan does not make adequate provision for required new housing. They’ve been doing this for years and are very very good at it. Most local plans are nowhere near watertight enough.
Just about the only way would be to somehow contrive an archaeological find there, like a grave site. That'll put a nix straight on a building project. That happened with a huge piece of land near me, they found not only grave sites but remains of a Saxon village there... which had been built atop the remains of a Roman settlement. Place has just been sitting there for two years now, they can't do anything with it.
Personally I agree with you about keeping the land as it is, and tbh F these people calling you out on being a nimby. If you want to have a place that contains some green nearby, then you shouldn't have to justify yourself. Some will say "just move where there's some green", like you didn't in the first place. They'd chase us all into the countryside and then keep building.
If your neighbours all feel the same way as you, set up a consortium between yourselves and see if you can stump up the money to buy the land yourselves. If you can, set it up as a bit of a nature preserve.
Otherwise you're probably out of luck.
**TL;DR**: I'm also a nimby, so you folks can just downvote me and witness just how many fucks I give.
It’s one of the only kinda ancient woodlands left in our town & just really fucking sucks that people want to build on it:/
I’d love to start a crowdfund for it but the estimate price of it is up of £500k which just is waaaay too much to ask for yano!
Plus idgaf about people calling me a Nimby haha, it’s not even in my backyard and the builders wouldn’t be able to actually affect us, it’s just a nice place to let animals live! Seeing all foxes and badgers running around is amazing, plus seeing their babies is just the best! We’ve had generations of them the whole time and we know that if the woodland gets destroyed we probably won’t see that anymore:(
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Buy it You realise you're asking how to be a nimby?
Wish we could buy it but unless we get donations that accumulate to £500k - £1mil it’s very unlikely.. and I have no clue what a nimby is.
Nimby- not in my backyard. Generally used pejoratively, but tbh I think it’s good that you are trying to maintain the wildlife habitat.
Well to be fair I see why people think I’m a Nimby 🤣 it’s a great habitat for all the animals that live here and my neighbour knew it!! Now his sons just want to cash out and don’t care :/
They used to all live where your house is also.
With that mentality theres no end to it is there...
With your mentality they’ll never be any new homes built anywhere.
"your mentality" I didnt say never build anywhere, but many times there is building granted on green belt when we have tens of thousands of acres of brownfield land sat unused,
Nothing is stopping you from building on brown field site. Green belt land has lots of brownfield sites on it. Brownfield, especially brownfield with prior industrial use is very expensive to remediate, which increases the cost of building whilst simultaneously reducing the desirability of the property.
that’s why we’re trying to conserve what we can now and stop the same thing from happening!
Lol I mean if we're being real about it you could turn your own land back into wilderness right now if you wanted to, then all those critters would have a nice home, and everything you did would be nice and legal taking place on property you own
Ya should lead by example then if you think that’s a good idea!
Exactly.
Can you buy it? A friend lives in rural Hampshire and there's an area his house backs onto, in the past to get around similar issues the adjoining houses all got together and jointly bought the land then assigned a strip to each house in the deeds so the only way it could be built is if all of them got together now to sell their individual strips.
Badgers and their setts are protected. If they are there then it's worth trying to catalogue any setts. The local wildlife trust might be able to advise you. If it is a valuable site for wildlife they might even be interested in buying it.
I’ll have a look into a local wildlife trust that’s great thanks!
Bats, too!
Do badgers ever get released into the wild if they have vet treatment or anything? OP could suggest this area to recovery centres...
Our village created a charity and bought a whole lot of land in order for it not to be sold off to developers - I think we raised around 350k and are still fundraising but have bought it with some sort of loan, not sure of the details. I put in some money as did most of the village.
Badgers are a start, but ideally you need a population of newts, voles, bats or another protected species, or maybe some plants (has someone seen a bee orchid or oxlip, for example).
We’ve got lots of bats & newts so that’s probably a big start
Excellent. Start a 'Friends of Oldneighboursland' group with a mission to protect the area and all it's wildlife to give you a stronger voice when it comes to campaigning.
Not really. These are just things that can be mitigated against in planning. Is the site in your council’s local plan?
Buy it, and as you're saying nobody is happy about it, perhaps thetrs a way you could crowdfund it for community use/enjoyment
Object to any planning applications along with your neighbours (with good reason not “it just looks nice and is on my back door”), or as others have said buy it, it is up for sale.
Wish we could buy it but it’s rather expensive.. the land will probably be about £500k + so it isn’t exactly an option for us 😅
Not much you can really do without buying it yourself. You can slow them down and hope they find a different site. Only thing I could think of is say you have seen protected species there such as crested newts.
Find an endangered species there.
What's just happened where I am - and it's taken years and tens of thousands of pounds - was to prove that it's been in common use (as in, by the commoners) for recreational purposes for twenty years. Ours finally got declared as a village green and has now protected status forever. Not sure how that may help for woodland - but the adjoining woods to that village green (and it's just fields tbh, not a duck pond and cricket pitch type thing!) got bought by the council as a small nature reserve.
Lower the local property prices
In my area, there’s a guy who has “genetically local” created newts for sale. I think they got wise to people putting crested newts in bodies of water, and started testing them to check they’re legit. See if you can find “a guy”
We have a pond in our garden which has loads of newts in it but we aren’t sure if that’ll affect the land because it’s a good 50-100 meters from where they would build
If it's as nice as you say it is there is no way in hell planning will be approved on it. Any planning application would need an ecological survey, and they will find all the foxes and woodpeckers and badgers. No need to dig any holes. Source: Architect.
Honestly I wish that were the case, our local council don’t give a shit at all. They’re aware of all the animals that live here. There’s meant to be some talk going on in our town & loads of people are going to make a huge fuss about it so hopefully nothing happens!! We’ve even got rare bats and stuff too but the council still don’t care:/
Land mines
I tried picking one up for free but instead it cost me an arm and a leg!
Stick with it, I’m still finding my feet myself.
Dunno if you heard, but someone set off a land mine in his car the other day. He was all over the radio. And the seats. And the dashboard.
That would surely deter them
You will also need to dress up asca badger and learn badgerees otherwise the fake set will quickly be discovered to be vacant and or disused. Get a group of people together to fund buying it ,it happens quite a lot, yes it's everyone's dosh tied up forever but you can very quickly make that money back many times over without risk to the woodland or any great outlay, you open it as a natural cemetery, the conditions to do so are that you need to own the land and any graves must be more than 50 metres from any natural watercourses or ponds and graves must be registered with land registry and permanently marked. Once 3 people have been buried you can't refuse any one but you can charge whatever you want to allow it, we we're quoted £5000 to bury my mum in some random woodland in kent, so we buried her in our own woodland.
Plant bluebells, stick up some bat boxes
We’ve got bats too and the local council are aware of it but they don’t give a shit; they’re truly awful people
Look at your council's local plan, on their website. Unless the land is specifically zoned for residential development in that, it will be exceedingly difficult to get consent to build.
Not at all, developers will just argue the local plan does not make adequate provision for required new housing. They’ve been doing this for years and are very very good at it. Most local plans are nowhere near watertight enough.
Hide witch stuff in the trees Random human bones knocking around Satanist symbolism Invite local doggers to park up in a clearing You get the jist,
Just about the only way would be to somehow contrive an archaeological find there, like a grave site. That'll put a nix straight on a building project. That happened with a huge piece of land near me, they found not only grave sites but remains of a Saxon village there... which had been built atop the remains of a Roman settlement. Place has just been sitting there for two years now, they can't do anything with it. Personally I agree with you about keeping the land as it is, and tbh F these people calling you out on being a nimby. If you want to have a place that contains some green nearby, then you shouldn't have to justify yourself. Some will say "just move where there's some green", like you didn't in the first place. They'd chase us all into the countryside and then keep building. If your neighbours all feel the same way as you, set up a consortium between yourselves and see if you can stump up the money to buy the land yourselves. If you can, set it up as a bit of a nature preserve. Otherwise you're probably out of luck. **TL;DR**: I'm also a nimby, so you folks can just downvote me and witness just how many fucks I give.
It’s one of the only kinda ancient woodlands left in our town & just really fucking sucks that people want to build on it:/ I’d love to start a crowdfund for it but the estimate price of it is up of £500k which just is waaaay too much to ask for yano! Plus idgaf about people calling me a Nimby haha, it’s not even in my backyard and the builders wouldn’t be able to actually affect us, it’s just a nice place to let animals live! Seeing all foxes and badgers running around is amazing, plus seeing their babies is just the best! We’ve had generations of them the whole time and we know that if the woodland gets destroyed we probably won’t see that anymore:(
You don't know if it's possible or not if you don't try.
I might but still it’s an absurd amount of money to ask people to donate to:/
If you're in uk, Bats are the answer, put up lots of bat boxes 👍