LETTER: Infrastructure can't support planned housing

Many local people are very opposed to the plans. Clowne does not have the infrastructure to support this kind of sprawl right into the village of Stanfree.

With housing developments all over the area already underway, surely the housing quota has been fulfilled?

We have a great deal already transpiring in Clowne, Stanfree and Bolsover – housing estates, solar farms, immense industrial units at Markham Vale and its increasing ‘expansion zone’, new roads, the threat of HS2 and the dreaded legacy of Coalite continues.

The Bolsover plans for healthy communities may as well, in my opinion, be written on toilet roll.

I feel there will be no standard of living for our community following the mass annihilation of green space, bulk disappearance of trees and hedgerows, reducing corridors for wildlife and finally, diminishing clean air to breathe – it’s a terrible and depressive thing for our future.

The existing biodiversity has been observed by interested parties over many years and we are aware of the ecological worth of these green fields, natural springs, hedgerows and veteran trees here. So, what will be done about existing wildlife – will the bats be banished, deer be displaced, water voles wiped out?

How do they plan to mitigate what is taken from our environment?

The site also has historical importance being linked with Bolsover as a collective manor is mentioned in the Domesday Books, evidence of Iron Age and Roman activity have been identified and we have victims of the plague buried in the territories that have so far been preserved.

Have archaeological surveys (external and reputable) been organised to account for the site’s past?

Puzzling, they want to improve and reduce the potential for flooding – the area proposed for development stands on limestone rock with a complex system of underground and over ground springs.

How do they get around that one without affecting the security and potential flooding to existing dwellings on Low Road, or in fact the potential new builds at the bottom of the flood plain?

With many neglected and empty buildings in the area at present (take the old Miners’ Welfare in Clowne – it’s been derelict for about ten years now), why eradicate productive green fields in exchange for more concrete?

Concentrate on putting right the current local concerns, but this is not a sustainablesolution and has been poorly planned by all involved in my view.

Fight to save the green fields between Clowne and Stanfree – weekly meetings at the Oxcroft Miners’ Welfare in Stanfree every Tuesday at 7pm.

Melissa Rose

By email