Giving it the Bird (aka Nimbys of the Week)

Well, feathers are certainly flying down in Kent about a proposal to use some brownfield land for a mini "new town" of up to 5,000 Houses.   Medway District Council and Land Securities were primed to make a start on this undertaking at Lodge Hill, Chattenden when some twitchers stuck their er beaks in and chirruped "Nightingale habitat" into the appropriate ears and "Nightingales will only live in clearly rectangular wooded areas" [someone might have made that one up] which has today seen the Lodge Hill site of the mooted new development declared by Natural England, the Government’s wildlife watchdog, to be a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) thus allegedly potentially scuppering the entire plan as detailed in this report from the Indie:

Whether accommodating the Nightingales and/or Natural England does or does not signal the end of the project we shall no doubt discover in due course.

The actual former military barracks upon which the proposed development was to be/may yet be centered is shown at "A" on the splendid Google Maps screen grab above. (B indicates the Camps "training area") The former Barracks aren't actually in Lodge Wood itself - which is where the trees where the Nightingales live and breed are - and there would appear from the map to be "scope" to shall we say "shift the plans around a bit to still keep the Wood, save the Nightingales and still provide 5000 new homes" - the only drawback here being that Land Securities might have to "buy" some land to do that, rather than rely on land provided er initially free, gratis and for nothing as against a promise to "pay something for the land" when they've actually built and sold the houses.

Update 15th March :

The case of a major new housing development being threatened by a population of nightingales, reported in The Independent on Thursday, is to become a legal battle.

Medway District Council in Kent is to challenge the decision by Natural England, the Government's wildlife agency, to declare the site for 5,000 proposed new homes a protected area because of nightingales nesting there.

On Wednesday Natural England announced that Lodge Hill near Chattenden in Kent, a disused army site, had been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) because its population of more than 80 nightingales makes it the best breeding site in Britain for the declining species.

Medway Councillor Jane Chitty said the brownfield site was "key to our core development plan in providing homes and services for our expanding local population".