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Representation ID: 13638

Received: 27/09/2021

Respondent: Mrs Laura Gurdin

Doc 55/9403#d9418, Sec C Table 31, Policy Number WSA2, Areas WAH238 and 240


I have lived in and around the Pelsall area most of my life and I take great pleasure in walking over these fields and have done so for many years. I understand that Andy Street and Wendy Morton are trying to use up the Brown Sites First and I applaud them for their efforts but this government and others alike lecture to us about saving the planet and global warming. How we need to clean the air! To buy better and very expensive boilers or expensive electric cars. What about our green spaces, our meadows and trees do they not count in this COP 26 Green plan? This area off Coronation Road/Mob Lane is full of wildlife, Deer, Wrens, Buzzards, Sparrowhawks, Hedge Sparrows, Dragonflies, Skylarks nest in the fields, Field mice, Moles and Voles, Bluetits, Great Tits, Wagtails, Chiff Chaff, Grey Geese feed in the fields when they have flooded, Heron, Cuckoo, Woodpeckers, Bats, Owls, Grasshoppers and Crickets, Spiders, Wild Poppies, Dasies, Meadow Grass,
Blackberry Bushes, Crab Apple Trees, Acorn Trees, Conker Trees. Last year
I was even surprised to see a Kingfisher at the Fordbrook! Then there are our threatened bee population, the list goes on but where do they all fit in with this plan? We are told to build places in our gardens for the wildlife to live and yet their natural habitat is being stripped away bit by bit. The Woodland Trust has advertisements asking for us to leave money in our Wills to help nature, well we can help nature by not digging it up and destroying natural habitats. To quote the BCP Walsall Summary PDF page 5, "the green belt boundary is drawn tightly around the urban edges. To help meet our future housing and employment land needs, there is an exceptional circumstance to alter the green belt boundaries through the Black Country Plan review process, to release land for housing and employment development. It is proposed to remove 6% of the green belt area in the Black Country for development" This will just be the start, each time you "draw up tightly" around an already expanded urban edge the margins are pushed outwards, and another boundary is "drawn up tightly" or should I say loosely! until more houses are needed and another 6% is given away. First it's a few hundred hectares in
the Green Belt Land then in 10 years' time it will be another few hundred, then a few more until nothing is left. Is this the plan to BUILD BACK BETTER!? The Black Country might be "very much shaped by its industrial past." But this does not mean that we are to sacrifice our Green Belt Land and make homeless the wildlife that resides there.

During lockdown these Green Fields have also been a haven for the local residents. They have given us the opportunity to escape our homes and into some quiet green space, to get back to nature, to restore our mental health

and improve on our physical health, and to save the precious NHS. The local residents will have to get in their cars to drive further out to find (if there are any left by the time you've finished) some open countryside to take their walks in, adding further to congestion and air pollution as we can't all afford electric cars! What happens to the road infrastructure, Coronation Road/Field Road and surrounding Rushall/ Pelsall/Shelfield areas already comes to a standstill as it is now, and yet you want to add to this.


It might sound corny but in the words of Janice Joplin "You don't know what you've got till it's gone!"