APPROACHING the Stroud end of Stratford Road and looking across the roundabout is the green vista of Grange Fields.

This beautiful landscape is designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and part of the Cotswolds AONB.

Item 116 of the National Planning Policy Framework Planning states that (within an AONB) “permission should be refused for major developments in these designated areas except in exceptional circumstances and where it can be demonstrated they are in the public interest”.

Furthermore, Grange Fields is not allocated for housing development in the emerging Local Plan.

Clearly, this development would not be in the public interest.

Yet again, our area is fighting developers who have no regard for the needs or wishes of local people but care only for their profit and to satisfy their shareholders.

These developers are exploiting the loophole in the planning process which gives developers a way to circumvent local plans whilst they are still in progress and even in the final stages of gaining approval.

If allowed to go ahead this development would severely degrade the beautiful landscape, visual amenity and character of Stroud with its green hills and valleys reaching into the town centre.

If development is permitted in the AONB what next for Wick Street, the Painswick valley and other areas we value highly?

Further information is available at SaveGrangeFieldsAONB.co.uk

Graham Bond

Farmhill