Top Threats

The British countryside is under greater threat than ever before. Green space is giving way to sprawling housing estates, airports and out-of-town retail centres, all of them driving the expansion of the UK's road network.

Attempts to name the "worst" of these schemes are always subjective to some extent. Is the loss of a large area of greenfield land worse than the destruction of a small but important wildlife habitat? Should we care more about the loss of remote landscape to a motorway scheme than the paving over of close-to-town green belt? There are no definitive answers to these questions, and the Manuka Club supports groups that campaign constructively for landscape protection wherever they are.

What is clear is that local groups can change the direction of national policy if they gain enough support. Campaigns against road-building at Newbury and Twyford Down in the 1990s gained massive public support. Although both roads were eventually built, tremendous public and media interest persuaded the then Government to back off from an even larger road-building programme.

The following developments - in no particular order - have been named by the Manuka Club's expert contacts in transport, housing and waste as amongst the most strategically important campaigns in the UK today.

Road building

Motorway expansion

The Government plans to spend a massive billions of pounds on widening UK motorways. Campaigners compare this policy to “digging a ditch in a bog.” Rebecca Lush, coordinator of RoadBlock, says, “It will just fill with more traffic. It is time for the government to stand by its rhetoric on reducing travel and tackling climate change, by scrapping expensive road building and investing in the sustainable alternatives.”

A628 Mottram to Tintwistle Bypass - Peak District

Ploughing through a National Park in some of the UK's most iconic countryside, this £325 million road is billed as the solution to heavy freight traffic on a rural road between Manchester and Sheffield.

Campaigners say the same effect could be achieved with a Heavy Goods Vehicle ban that would force lorries to use the nearby motorway network.

Weymouth Relief Road - Dorset

The Government has given provisional funding approval to this 4-mile long road which would cut through an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and destroy ancient woodland. The road would also dissect a housing estate.

Campaigners have called for the Dorset County Council to implement sustainabl travel measures instead.

Heysham M6 Link - Lancaster

This dual carriageway would destroy green fields to the north of Lancaster popular with fishing enthusiasts, walkers and bird-spotters. The hilly landscape means that the road would require deep cuttings, massive embankments and a flyover.

Campaigners are opposing the business case for the road, and promoting alternative ways of relieving traffic congestion.

Airport expansion

Heathrow

The Government's plans to build a third runway at Britain's biggest airport have run into stiff opposition, including from the Conservative Party and London councils representing 2 million people. Building an extra runway would increase noise and pollution, and require the demolition of hundreds of homes near the airport perimeters.

Stansted

Plans for a second runway have attracted huge opposition across the surrounding area, from MPs, local authorities and the public. Nevertheless, the Government has endorsed the construction of a new runway by 2012, which will see up to 80 million passengers a year pass through Stansted.

Campaigners say the airport authorities and Government have ignored the wider social, environmental and economic impacts of airport expansion.

Lydd

This small airport in Kent has some very large expansion plans. Handling just 3,000 passengers per year, Lydd airport lies in the middle of an internationally recognised nature site and in the shadow of Dungeness nuclear power station. Yet Lydd's owner has applied to boost capacity to 2 million passengers per year.

Needless to say, the scheme has attracted strong local resistance and is opposed on nuclear safety grounds. 

Waste facilities

Eastcroft incinerator - Nottingham

Nottingham's poor record on recycling means that a large proportion of its waste is burnt in an incinerator close to the city centre. Local residents have already defeated one application to expand the site, but another lengthy battle lies ahead.

Campaigners say that the expansion would have significant public health impacts, and are calling for more sustainable waste policies.

Newhaven incinerator - East Sussex

The County Council has backed controversial plans to build a huge incinerator in the small town of Newhaven, against the recommendations of a public inquiry.

Campaigners say that a new incinerator would be unnecessary if the Council developed more sustainable waste plans in line with central Government guidance.

Huncoat waste treatment plant - Lancaster

Inhabitants of Huncoat have vigorously opposed plans to build a large waste treatment plant next to this small village. The plant would be served a new access road which would destroy part of the green belt.

Campaigners say the council has underestimated the environmental, health and safety impacts upon the local area.

House building

Thames Gateway

The Government plans to build 120,000 new homes in the area by 2016 - 20 percent of them upon greenfield land. The development will damage a predominantly rural landscape which boasts some of Britain's best wildlife habitats.

Campaigners say that house-building targets could be met by building upon previously developed land alone.

Milton Keynes/South Midlands

Many tens of thousands of new homes are planned for this area, threatening to merge a number of local villages and markets towns into one huge conurbation, with substantial losses of green belt land.

Campaigners wish to see more focus upon brownfield development and urban regeneration.