Keep It Green UK Podcast

Multi-storey buildings on The Essex Way, threats to public safety, and council biases. How we might stop this, save our green belt, and have a lie down.

Hello.

My neighbours didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for this. I rebuilt my family’s house in Epping. I built it sustainably, to last for my generation and the next. A year ago, almost to the day, I finished the build. A letter came through my door. It said developers, partnering with the owners of the farmed land opposite, planned to build a housing estate on this and on other of Epping’s green fields. Green fields, on designated green belt land. Land protected according to our district’s Local Plan. Our community would never be the same again.

Since then, neighbours and other local residents have donated to the cause to stop this. Many have helped with a public awareness campaign, Using donations, we’ve hired some transport consultants to critique the developer’s application. Thank you neighbours. They have given me their trust to do something about this mess we’ve inherited. They have given me hope. I feel excited and optimistic to have the support and help of so many who want to protect our community. At the same time I feel an immense responsibility not to let them down. I have little or no control over this situation. I can only offer insight and persuasion to those with decision-making powers.

Neighbours have rallied to the cause to stop unsustainable development in their town

I am not alone. Others are trying to do the same. If we all try, some of us may succeed. One year on from that letter on my doormat, I feel the cliché: I overestimated my knowledge and ability to change things, and underestimated what I would learn and what we can do together. I am a landowner who has looked into sustainable developments in another parts of the UK. Listeners / readers of this journey will know I have had a previous battle with Epping Forest District Council (EFDC) planning team, and won a Planning Inspectorate appeal against them regarding a small extension to my house. I volunteered and helped friends trying to save the green belt when our Local Plan entered its consultation stage many years ago. To mix my metaphors, my circle of competence from the knowledge gained from those things, was just the tip of the iceberg of what I have tried to get my head around in the last year.

Now, let’s get into it. Here’s the latest - and frankly scary - update on Stewards Green Fields, the East Epping housing application, and The Keepers’ mission to protect our district’s green belt and promote sustainable development. I now need to ask neighbours for their attention, their understanding, and their voice to answer a question they will soon be asked.

What we know now about the latest application

What we have found out about the East Epping application is disturbing. Worse, the trajectory of development in the district, overseen by our council and national government, has changed. It now presents a serious threat to our community’s public safety, on top of the damage to local wildlife and environment, and to our residents’ and children’s future quality of life.

It is on the evidence of the threat to public safety and the environmental damage, that we have worked to make planning decision makers both aware and accountable for their decisions, and push for a better path.

Though our financial resources are small compared with the developers, they have paid for professional transport consultants’ reports that give us the evidence to stop this and other unsustainable green belt developments in our district. Further lines of enquiry with experts in other fields remain open. But for now, we have a solid case to halt this application.

I should quickly add that our transport reports raise serious concerns about other green belt developments in our district too. I hope the reports will help decide those cases, and possibly support a review of earlier decisions where warranted.

First, the huge scale of the development becomes apparent

The scale became clear once Pigeon, the developer, and the Chisenhale-Marsh family landowners submitted their planning application (EPF/1737/26).

The plans show a development dominated by three and four storey buildings. There are 400 multi-storey houses, a care home and other units, all on green belt land to the east and south-east of Epping Station, running across the Essex Way. That could mean somewhere between 1,000 and 1,600 extra people, depending on household size.

This comes on top of the 450-plus houses already approved, but not yet built, at SEMPA (South Epping), just a few metres down the road - roughly another 1,000 to 1,800 people.

According to the Land Registry, Pigeon and the Chisenhale-Marsh family also own a further large plot of land next door, towards Epping town centre and nearby Coopersale Village. It is not in this application. See the maps below.

Land Registry ownership of Pigeon / Chisenhale-Marsh land: Stewards Green Fields (purple), and the application site and SEMPA (green).

The historic rural market town of Epping has just 11,000 people. Its main roads, narrow roads and country lanes are already dangerously congested at times. Its public services and infrastructure are at overcapacity.

What do I mean by overcapacity? Here is some of what we have shared with the Council’s planning officers:

* Photos and other evidence of gridlocked traffic in all parts of the town, and on all major roads into and out of the district.

* Evidence of flooded roads, and of cars in queues regularly mounting the pavement outside the local Ivy Chimneys primary school.

* Some parents who live a short walk from that same school but can’t get places for their children there, or anywhere in Epping, have to travel to Gants Hill. Often an hour long round trip.

These are just a few of the objections Epping’s residents have already raised with the Council.

For any residents that haven’t objected yet, please do. There is still time. The Council’s target date for a decision is 14 December. Email [email protected] quoting EPF/1737/26, with your name and address. Our guidance on how to object, our reports, photos and our consultants’ transport critique are linked below and are at www.thekeepers.uk.

And if that doesn’t convince you to object, please soberly digest the next section.

Public safety concerns

The main concerns in our consultants’ reports are:

* The traffic hasn’t been properly assessed. The developers have failed to assess properly the effect of all the new traffic the development would generate, and the devastating effect this would have on the local environment.

* Emergency services will struggle even more on our congested roads, particularly on response times. Epping Fire Station has limited fire-fighting services, and we rely on firefighters and better-equipped fire engines coming, and avoiding delays, from Chelmsford and Loughton. A changing climate multiplies these risks again. Hotter, drier summers and spells of extreme rain and flooding are existential threats. The make-up of the Forest will change in the coming years and its resilience to fire will weaken, while fires like those seen across our district this summer will become more severe and more common.

* One way in. The site relies on one main entrance, on the narrow Stewards Green Road, a road that floods, subsides and gets closed by the police. And let’s not forget the site is green belt land and is not in the Local Plan, the plan the Council adopted after consulting residents on which land could be released for development.

What happens next, and what else can be done

Neighbours, watch out for a letter from the Council’s Conservation Team this month, and please reply in support. Here is the background.

Last December, with the help of many neighbours, I asked the Council to make the houses on Stewards Green Road a conservation area. They have a unique Scandi / Swiss ski chalet, late 1950’s / early 1960’s architecture, layout and history. The Conservation Team…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keepitgreenukpodcast.substack.com

Episode 2 The Keepers meet the public

-       Campaigning to protect local green belt at The Town Show

-       Communicating objectives and answering objections

-       Some things UK Government can do to help locals and developers build sustainable housing and tackle some of the UK’s housing problems

• Keep Epping District Green (KEDG) is a community group formed in 2025 by local residents concerned about pressure on Epping District's green belt. It operates as The Keepers (www.thekeepers.uk).

• Ian Nelson Edwards was an executive at the Financial Times for 18 years. He and his family have lived in Epping District for 20 years.

• Epping Forest District Council was placed into Special Planning Measures on 15 June 2026, transferring major planning decisions from the local authority to the Planning Inspectorate.

• The Keepers are seeking 50 founding donors of £200 each (target: £10,000) to fund independent planning and transport consultants' reports on proposed green belt developments.

• Contact: [email protected], donation details at www.thekeepers.uk

 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keepitgreenukpodcast.substack.com

Welcome to Keep It Green UK, Saving our green belt and promoting sustainable development where you live.

 

This episode is written and read by Ian Nelson Edwards

 

In this episode:

 

-              Amateur objections to planning applications, do they work, and should they be pursued along side those with professional support?

 

-              Also  the UK Government sends Epping Forest , my district council, and nine other councils into special planning measures – what does this mean and why  is this important?

 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keepitgreenukpodcast.substack.com