Green Belt land North & East of Ware has been allocated for a mixed-use development of 1500 homes. The Green Belt was established in 1955 to stop urban sprawl, but the Conservatives are allowing increasing development in Hertfordshire’s green belt as part of their plan to suburbanise the London to Cambridge corridor. Green Party policies on the green belt are clear and unambiguous.

The farmland and woods to the north of Ware are a beautiful part of our green and pleasant land. The woods, hills, rivers, and meadows are a resource for us all. Generations of Ware residents have enjoyed walks across these fields, have played there as kids, and watched crops grow and wildlife thrive as the seasons came and went. Now that’s all under threat from developers’ greed putting profit over people and the places they love. It’s time for a counter-attack. 

The Green Party will make it easier for communities to block the wrong type of development. The planning system is based on a presumption in favour of development, which loads the dice in favour of speculative developers seeking high profits. We will repeal this presumption and replace the current National Planning Policy Framework with spatial plans that preserve ecological habitats and prioritise council house building on brownfield land. A new developer’s duty will ensure that a greater share of the profits that are created when new homes are built goes back to the local council, to be spent on planning new council homes and accessible green spaces for the community. We will strengthen existing Green Belt planning protections, prohibiting all inappropriate development. The Green Party has never, and never will, accept funding from commercial vested interests.

Nicholas Cox says:

"I’d like to express my extreme regret over the potential loss of our precious green belt, but the land isn’t lost until it’s built on. Green Party Policy is to encourage applications from communities for Green Belt designations. This would be my preferred method of stopping the Ware North & East Development and I commit to working towards this objective. If we can’t stop Ware North, and with Tories in control of government and councils and determined to push ahead it will be very hard, then we have to fight to make it as green a development as possible in every sense and maintain access to the countryside for us all. Looking to the future we must make sure this can’t happen again in East Herts."

Tom Day says:

"The Green Party recognises a universal human right to shelter which is affordable, secure and to a standard adequate for the health and well-being of the household. The housing crisis is complex and the dogmatic Conservative policy of allowing market forces to provide is causing misery, distress, and social injustice whilst enriching landlords, investors and property developers. Meanwhile we have over 25 million unoccupied bedrooms in British homes. What we need is a functioning housing market, not more sprawling housing estates suburbanising our countryside. Where new housing is required, mid-rise integrated housing as used in Barcelona and Paris is a more efficient use of limited land area, achieving more than 50,000 people per km². To meet our housing needs without loss of green belt, Stevenage, Hatfield, and Harlow should all be redeveloped to provide high quality, decent, and attractive homes that the community can be proud of."

I believe strongly that Herts County Council must divest its pension funds from fossil fuel companies and start to invest in a green recovery.

See our campaign here.

I am supporting the 20s Plenty for Hertfordshire campaign.

The overcrowding on the trains and the constant new build projects are of great concern to us all. We will eventually get longer higher capacity trains but the town is big enough now and we are appalled by the plans to build 1500 new homes north of Ware. We will do what we can.

I used to live on the Hyde so I have first hand experience of the problems that residents are facing.

Biffa say operations will finally cease as the final cell is capped next week [April 2021]. I hope that problems rapidly diminish in the near future but as your County Councillor I would continue to take an interest in this and monitor the situation by talking to residents and whilst walking my dog along the adjoining footpaths. Should problems persist then I would forcefully press Biffa on the odour issue through the liaison committee, rather than accept their reasons why nothing can be done as other councillors may have done in the past. By 2027 when the levelling off of the site is complete, Biffa's licence says that the site must be returned to meadow. I would work to make sure this happens and that the area is rewilded to benefit both the environment and the people of Ware, with no further industrial use.

I've applied to join Residents Against the Biffa Landfill on Facebook, so that I can pass community comments into committee, and I will actively support their campaign to get Biffa to stop polluting Ware.

Walking along the side of the 'Old A10' or the Cambridge Road at Wadesmill you notice a monument dedicated to Thomas Clarkson, a key figure in the campaign to abolish the transatlantic slave trade, 200 years ago. Born on 28 March 1760 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, Thomas Clarkson was a relentless campaigner against slavery, described by Coleridge, the poet, as 'a giant with one idea'. He travelled 35,000 miles on horseback around Britain in the abolitionist cause and risked his life in Bristol and Liverpool gathering evidence from sailors and ship's surgeons to use in his campaign against the slave trade. In June 1785 he famously made the decision to devote his life to the abolition movement while resting at Wadesmill on his way to London from Cambridge. He had just won a prize at Cambridge University for his essay (in Latin) on 'Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?'. From then on, ending slavery became his driving passion for the remaining 61 years of his life. The monument marks this pivotal moment in the campaign. The existing monument was erected by the roadside at Wadesmill by Mr Arthur Giles-Puller, of Youngsbury, and unveiled in October 1879. Over time it had fallen into disrepair and work has just finished on the project to restore and re-site the Thomas Clarkson monument. The restoration work was carried out with a Heritage lottery grant in partnership with the county council and Thundridge Parish Council.

Nicholas Cox says:

“From the Peasants Revolt, through the Levellers’ resistance to Cromwell, the revolution of 1688 which overthrew King James II, to the abolition of slavery, East Hertfordshire has a long and proud history of supporting progressive radical social movements and social justice and I want to see this tradition continue into the future!”