THIS disgusting mess, photographed in December on School Bank, Norley (picture below), is part of Cheshire’s Green Belt. 
Or at least it was until developers got their hands on it, with the support of Cheshire West and Chester Council.
For readers who don’t know it, Norley is a tiny, scattered village on the edge of Delamere Forest and has no affinity with the dense estate of “affordable homes” which we are now to have at its heart. 
This is despite the express wishes of virtually 100 per cent of local people and follows a prolonged fight against it by a group of Norley residents.
I should add that there was no objection to the principle of new housing being built in the village, simply to the disproportionate and inappropriate nature of this scheme.
I am not pleading a special case for Norley, but write on behalf of the people throughout Cheshire who are looking on, helplessly and with increasing anger, as the county’s Green Belt is disfigured forever by a great rash of housing developments – many of them not in keeping with the rural character of this part of England.
The statement by a minister of HM Government three years or so ago that there should be a “presumption in favour of development” on Green Belt land has been embraced with enthusiasm by our council, which seems determined to aid and abet the resultant feeding frenzy of the developers to the detriment of those who are already living in west Cheshire 
Together, they are continuing to demonstrate a disregard for the wishes of ordinary people, many of whom feel disenfranchised and helpless in the face of what is being done. 
And I see no evidence that there has ever been any attempt to create an inventory of brownfield sites before setting out to ruin the Green Belt. 
Can this be because the developers don’t like these?
No doubt CWAC will plead that they are simply conforming to the demands imposed on them by the National Planning Policy Framework, that more houses need to be built, and that force majeure is to blame. 
In its short tenure so far as custodians of around half of our county, this egregious council has done more damage to Cheshire than anything else.
Chris Proudfoot
Norley