A relatively early start this morning to go along to observe a meeting of Babergh’s Licensing and Appeals Committee (Trees), which involved a 9 am site inspection on Chilton Airfield, followed by the meeting proper which took place in the Stephenson Centre in Cornard. Recently, Babergh imposed Tree Preservation Orders on a number of trees on and around the proposed Chilton Woods Development. This seemed to me to be an encouraging move. A small number of these orders was objected to by the County Council, the Landowner, and Ashwells , the developer, and as a result the orders had to be reconsidered.
The notice in the picture above caused some amusement among the assembled party; unfortunately the airfield has become somewhat notorious as a target for fly-tippers, but Councillors had not appreciated that the problem had reached such a scale! The unsightly heap did however go some way towards convincing the Committee that the airfield has some areas that are sorely in need of screening.
I’m not actually sure if this was a contributory factor, but the trees themselves were looking in fine form and the Committee decided to leave the orders unchanged. In fact the tree preservation orders will not of themselves prevent development, but they will offer some element of control since they will have to be actively taken into account when plans are submitted.
I don’t think that there was anything sinister in Ashwell and the County’s objections. It would have been administratively easier for them in the future had the orders not been in place. I do however find it a little ironic that the first official encounter between the landowner, the developer and the Babergh was on the face of it an attempt to take some of the ‘woods’ out of Chilton Woods.
