• Contact
  • About
  • Authors
DONATE
NEWSLETTER SIGN UP
  • Login
East Anglia Bylines
  • HOME
  • News
    • All
    • Brexit
    • Education
    • Health
    • Welfare
    • World
    Owners of the wooden Dutch built yacht ordered to leave the UK.

    Soviet-style border force order Dutch couple to abandon sailing holiday and go home

    A&E

    Crisis looming for Southend Hospital and the Mid and South Essex NHS Trust

    Luton town hall

    Luton Deputy Mayor regrets Covid breach

    Liz Truss

    EU taking legal action against UK over Northern Ireland protocol: how did we get here?

    Rook

    Northern Ireland Protocol Bill results in Cambridge lab losing its EU funding

    17 May BPI occupation

    BP hypocrisy on climate challenged by Cambridge sit-in

    People in masks

    Eight changes the world needs to make to live with COVID

    Queen Elizabeth II Crossing

    Anxiety grows over viability of planned Lower Thames Crossing

    Norfolk for Europe March

    Goodbye, Leave and Remain?

    • Brexit
    • Health
    • Education
    • World
  • Opinion
  • Politics
    • Local government
    • Justice
    • Activism
  • Climate
    • Environment
  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    Stapleford Granary concert hall

    July classical events at Stapleford Granary, Cambridge

    Suffolk SketchFest is back

    Traditional beers by the Brentwood Brewing Company.

    Brentwood’s own craft beer company

    People in masks

    Eight changes the world needs to make to live with COVID

    Norwich Floods in 1912: handing a loaf to a flooded-out cottager

    Spectre of 1953 looms as East Anglia faces flood warnings

    University of East Anglia. Photo by Michael John Button via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

    A civic university for the East

    Southend Section 60 map

    Police issue Dispersal Order in Southend

    Ukraine wins Eurovision 2022

    Sam Ryder helps Eurovision’s possible return to the UK

    Robert Walpole

    Walpole: When did the end game begin?

    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    • Property
  • Business
    • All
    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    RMT Ipswich Branch

    Mick Lynch and a new wave of trade unionists

    Traditional beers by the Brentwood Brewing Company.

    Brentwood’s own craft beer company

    Sunak & Johnson

    The economics of the government’s pay disputes don’t stack

    Queen Elizabeth II Crossing

    Anxiety grows over viability of planned Lower Thames Crossing

    Rishi Sunak

    There is a solution to public sector pay disputes if the government wants to find one

    'For sale' boards.

    Housing Association “Right to Buy” proposal is ‘just wrong’ say experts

    East Anglia One windfarm

    One in three Suffolk manufacturing jobs lost since Tories came to power

    Foodbank parcels

    Hunger crisis: is it a national emergency?

    Mortgage debt.

    Sub-prime from Hollywood farce comes to UK housing

    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    • Farming
  • ANGLIA
    • All
    • Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
    Saffron Walden turf maze

    Essex town fighting health threat of poor air quality

    Latton Island campaigners

    Rich and poor dispute new Essex river crossing

    Owners of the wooden Dutch built yacht ordered to leave the UK.

    Soviet-style border force order Dutch couple to abandon sailing holiday and go home

    Fertiliser spreading

    Fertiliser – Where there’s muck…

    Stapleford Granary concert hall

    July classical events at Stapleford Granary, Cambridge

    A&E

    Crisis looming for Southend Hospital and the Mid and South Essex NHS Trust

    Suffolk SketchFest is back

    Traditional beers by the Brentwood Brewing Company.

    Brentwood’s own craft beer company

    Sailing barges, Colne estuary.

    The River Colne – where nature, history and modern life collide

    • East Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
  • Series
No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • News
    • All
    • Brexit
    • Education
    • Health
    • Welfare
    • World
    Owners of the wooden Dutch built yacht ordered to leave the UK.

    Soviet-style border force order Dutch couple to abandon sailing holiday and go home

    A&E

    Crisis looming for Southend Hospital and the Mid and South Essex NHS Trust

    Luton town hall

    Luton Deputy Mayor regrets Covid breach

    Liz Truss

    EU taking legal action against UK over Northern Ireland protocol: how did we get here?

    Rook

    Northern Ireland Protocol Bill results in Cambridge lab losing its EU funding

    17 May BPI occupation

    BP hypocrisy on climate challenged by Cambridge sit-in

    People in masks

    Eight changes the world needs to make to live with COVID

    Queen Elizabeth II Crossing

    Anxiety grows over viability of planned Lower Thames Crossing

    Norfolk for Europe March

    Goodbye, Leave and Remain?

    • Brexit
    • Health
    • Education
    • World
  • Opinion
  • Politics
    • Local government
    • Justice
    • Activism
  • Climate
    • Environment
  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    Stapleford Granary concert hall

    July classical events at Stapleford Granary, Cambridge

    Suffolk SketchFest is back

    Traditional beers by the Brentwood Brewing Company.

    Brentwood’s own craft beer company

    People in masks

    Eight changes the world needs to make to live with COVID

    Norwich Floods in 1912: handing a loaf to a flooded-out cottager

    Spectre of 1953 looms as East Anglia faces flood warnings

    University of East Anglia. Photo by Michael John Button via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

    A civic university for the East

    Southend Section 60 map

    Police issue Dispersal Order in Southend

    Ukraine wins Eurovision 2022

    Sam Ryder helps Eurovision’s possible return to the UK

    Robert Walpole

    Walpole: When did the end game begin?

    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    • Property
  • Business
    • All
    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    RMT Ipswich Branch

    Mick Lynch and a new wave of trade unionists

    Traditional beers by the Brentwood Brewing Company.

    Brentwood’s own craft beer company

    Sunak & Johnson

    The economics of the government’s pay disputes don’t stack

    Queen Elizabeth II Crossing

    Anxiety grows over viability of planned Lower Thames Crossing

    Rishi Sunak

    There is a solution to public sector pay disputes if the government wants to find one

    'For sale' boards.

    Housing Association “Right to Buy” proposal is ‘just wrong’ say experts

    East Anglia One windfarm

    One in three Suffolk manufacturing jobs lost since Tories came to power

    Foodbank parcels

    Hunger crisis: is it a national emergency?

    Mortgage debt.

    Sub-prime from Hollywood farce comes to UK housing

    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    • Farming
  • ANGLIA
    • All
    • Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
    Saffron Walden turf maze

    Essex town fighting health threat of poor air quality

    Latton Island campaigners

    Rich and poor dispute new Essex river crossing

    Owners of the wooden Dutch built yacht ordered to leave the UK.

    Soviet-style border force order Dutch couple to abandon sailing holiday and go home

    Fertiliser spreading

    Fertiliser – Where there’s muck…

    Stapleford Granary concert hall

    July classical events at Stapleford Granary, Cambridge

    A&E

    Crisis looming for Southend Hospital and the Mid and South Essex NHS Trust

    Suffolk SketchFest is back

    Traditional beers by the Brentwood Brewing Company.

    Brentwood’s own craft beer company

    Sailing barges, Colne estuary.

    The River Colne – where nature, history and modern life collide

    • East Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
  • Series
No Result
View All Result
East Anglia Bylines
No Result
View All Result

Saving the Wick

A rare wildlife site near Colchester is threatened with new housing. In this opinion piece Grace Darke tells the story of the campaign to date

Grace DarkebyGrace Darke
December 2, 2021
in Environment, Essex, Opinion
Saving the Wick

A frosty morn in Middlewick. Photo by Mr. James D (cc-by-sa/2.0)

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

The Middlewick Ranges in Colchester is a unique, rare and precious ‘Local Wildlife Site’: one of the last significant remaining pieces of undisturbed lowland dry acid grassland in the country. Lowland dry acid grassland, named after the acidic soil that supports fine grasses and lichens, has almost disappeared from England. As well as being protected, it is a UK priority habitat for wildlife conservation.

Over 600 species depend on the 86-hectare (215-acre) site. They include: skylarks, nightingales, bats, reptiles and many crucial and rare invertebrates. It’s also a well-loved, vital greenspace and urban buffer for the residents of South Colchester and the only large accessible open space in that area. Despite its ecological and social importance, not to mention its role in climate change mitigation and nature recovery, the site is at risk of development and could be largely destroyed to make way for 1,000 homes.

The Ministry of Defence and Colchester Borough

The site is owned by The Ministry of Defence, and in 2016 the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), the MoD’s property arm, announced that the Middlewick Ranges was to be sold for housing development. With fear of a private developer placing 2,000 homes on the site, Colchester Borough Council hastily included the site into their local plan. The site plans were submitted with out-of-date reports including ecological surveys submitted by the MOD/ DIO, which had been carried out at inappropriate times and were riddled with limitations making them completely inaccurate.

Local protests

Upon discovery of the sale of the Middlewick, residents set up a petition and Facebook group which attracted the attention of local independent and organised ecologist groups. An independent ecology survey was later commissioned by the campaign group which was able to describe the true diversity of the site. These reports have been submitted to Natural England who confirm the site’s ecological value. The site satisfies many of the criteria for being awarded higher protection, but the formal process takes a long time and cannot be done before the sale occurs.

Changing the rules

Planning rules allow developers to build on some types of rare land, so long as they offset the loss by creating ‘replacements’ (known as Biodiversity Net Gain). Several plant, invertebrate and bird species found in lowland dry acid grassland are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The Middlewick Ranges is a Local Wildlife Site with protected species. As such, it should never have been allocated, nor allowed to remain in the plan.

Defra’s has a “Biodiversity Metric” which allows planners to calculate how to mitigate the loss of protected sites.  In this case that was not used. Instead a ‘bespoke metric’ was developed and used to push through the plans. The MoD proposed to replace the rare grassland, by converting farmland nearby by adding sulphur and other toxins to the ground. There are no guarantees that an irreplaceable habitat such as lowland dry acid grassland can be created from scratch and there is little evidence that this kind of mitigation has or will ever work.

Undervaluing the ecology

The Middlewick Ranges should NEVER have been included in the local plan. We are now at the planning modifications stage where the plans have been approved subject to modifications, and a wide campaign to object to these modifications has just ended. The decision of whether the site will remain in the local plan rests with the examining inspector and ultimately Colchester Borough Council. The campaign supporters include the Essex Wildlife Trust, Butterfly Conservation, Colchester Natural History Society, Essex Field club, en-form and the Community Planning Alliance. The campaign also received pro-bono legal advice from ‘Lawyers for Nature’.

What is very clear is that the site has been enormously undervalued in terms of its ecological value. We don’t blame the council and we don’t blame the inspector as they made these decisions based on the information they were provided with.

Colchester Council’s planning and housing manager has said: “Nobody local wants any development, I don’t think it’s just Middlewick, but we do have to allocate it. It has to go somewhere or it would be a free-for-all and I don’t think anyone would welcome that.”

This quote simply validates our views that the Middlewick Ranges is not being acknowledged for its ecological value, because this isn’t ‘just another development’.

The inspector was presented with out of date and poor evidence, so assessing building on this site and mitigating any biodiversity loss was bound to result in unsound and inaccurate decisions.

Now that the inspector has been given up to date and valid research, we know that any plans to include this site into the local plan would be unsound.

When the evidence changes, we change our minds

Historically speaking, science has dragged us out of some pretty embarrassing and dangerous positions; for instance humans used to believe that the earth was flat, that animals were machines, that cigarettes were good for us and that diesel cars were environmentally friendly… there have been many times we have changed our minds based on our developed understanding and research. It’s called progress… Being able to change our behaviours and direction is what makes humans so progressive. When we are presented with information it enables us to form an opinion, but without the full information we can form the wrong opinion. It’s vital as humans and individuals we continue to evolve because our knowledge and science is always evolving. If we don’t open up our minds to new information, then we can’t make progress… in other words, if we continue to assess the suitability of development on the Wick based on out-of-date surveys then we won’t be making an accurate assessment.

What we want to say to the inspector and Colchester Borough Council is that it is ok to change your mind. Anyone that has the courage to say they have changed their position demonstrates progression and an open mind.

Lessons to others

A note to anyone in a similar situation where they face the loss of a valuable greenspace. Had it not been for the tireless efforts of campaigners and local ecologists, this site could very easily have been approved (and still can be) through the planning process, without any problems. What this story demonstrates is that, without thorough surveying and oversight, we could be (are) losing many ecologically important sites all over the UK (and beyond) simply because our planning systems are not robust enough in supporting nature.  Regardless of being labelled a ‘nimby’, sometimes the best people to fight these kinds of developments are the very people that live on and use these sites. With enough support and knowledge, it is local people that can challenge and, in many cases, win against the system that simply views Nature as an opportunity to make money. 

Will Colchester be able to untangle this mess and do what is legally and morally the right thing? We hope to report back with good news in the not-too-distant future.

Essex Forest Initiative
Anglia

COP26: Does East Anglia Have Enough Trees?

November 6, 2021
Barbastelle bat
Anglia

COP26: The woodland ark

November 8, 2021
Tags: EnvironmentLocal government
Previous Post

Review: Benjamin Appl & James Baillieu at Wells Maltings

Next Post

Is this the “oven ready” deal Johnson promised?

Grace Darke

Grace Darke

Related Posts

Saffron Walden turf maze
Climate

Essex town fighting health threat of poor air quality

byJenny Rhodes
July 3, 2022
Latton Island campaigners
Anglia

Rich and poor dispute new Essex river crossing

byJessica Walsh
July 2, 2022
Fertiliser spreading
Anglia

Fertiliser – Where there’s muck…

byRobert Gunn
July 1, 2022
A&E
Anglia

Crisis looming for Southend Hospital and the Mid and South Essex NHS Trust

byJ.J. Jackson
June 29, 2022
Traditional beers by the Brentwood Brewing Company.
Anglia

Brentwood’s own craft beer company

byRobert Gunn
June 28, 2022
Next Post
Oven ready social care plan

Is this the "oven ready" deal Johnson promised?

Want to support us?

Can you help East Anglia Bylines to grow and become more sustainable with a regular donation, no matter how small?  

DONATE

Sign up to our newsletter

If you would like to receive the East Anglia Bylines regular newsletter, straight talking direct to your inbox, click the button below.

NEWSLETTER

LATEST

House of Commons

GrubbyGates

July 3, 2022
Saffron Walden turf maze

Essex town fighting health threat of poor air quality

July 3, 2022
Latton Island campaigners

Rich and poor dispute new Essex river crossing

July 2, 2022
Mr Pecksniff (Social Media)

Pecksniff’s Diary

July 1, 2022

MOST READ

Owners of the wooden Dutch built yacht ordered to leave the UK.

Soviet-style border force order Dutch couple to abandon sailing holiday and go home

July 1, 2022
Saffron Walden turf maze

Essex town fighting health threat of poor air quality

July 3, 2022
Boris Johnson and his cabinet.

Our government is killing democracy by a thousand cuts

May 3, 2022
House of Commons

GrubbyGates

July 3, 2022

Tags

Activism Art Brexit Business Cambridgeshire Climate Community COP26 Culture Democracy Development Economics Economy Education Employment Energy Environment Farming Health Humour Hymns International Women's Day Justice Letters Local elections 2022 Local government National Grid NHS Norfolk Pandemic Partygate Party politics Pecksniff Poetry Politics Poverty Rivers of East Anglia Sewage Sizewell Social care Suffolk Ukraine VAWG Welfare Wildlife
East Anglia Bylines

East Anglia Bylines is a regional online newspaper that supports citizen journalism. Our aim is to publish well-written, fact-based articles and opinion pieces on subjects that are of interest to people in East Anglia and beyond.

Learn more about us

No Result
View All Result
  • About us
    • Contact us
    • Bylines Network
    • Complaints
    • Newsletter
    • Privacy Policy
    • Donate
  • UK
  • Anglia
  • About us
  • UK
  • Anglia

© 2022 East Anglia Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • News
    • Brexit
    • Health
    • Education
    • World
  • Opinion
  • Politics
    • Local government
    • Justice
    • Activism
  • Climate
    • Environment
  • Lifestyle
    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    • Property
  • Business
    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    • Farming
  • ANGLIA
    • East Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
  • Series

© 2022 East Anglia Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In