In short, my fellow residents are up in arms over a planned development of a hundred or so homes on the outskirts of the village. I really can't see their point. Expansion over the years already means that what was once a rural hamlet is already approaching the size of a small town – and one which, incidentally, already has a major A-road and a busy railway thundering straight through the middle of it. Many of the homes will also be built on the site of the soon to be defunct dairy – personally I'd welcome 400 new villagers above the noxious miasma of its slurry any day.
Of course, I'm not suggesting for a minute that we should steamroller over the interests of every householder or environmental group in the land to build, build, build. Nor do I think that we should embark on a splurge of ill-conceived construction that leaves the landscape blighted with ugly developments that we’ll look back on in 25 years wondering what the town planners had been smoking. But houses are in critically short supply, and yet housebuilding activity remains depressed. A crisis is brewing and the sacrifice people are being asked to make is a small one.
Unfortunately, there often seems to be bizarre anti-change motive behind this so-called nimbyism that no amount of rational reassurance can address. We, as a nation, also frequently object to wind farms, new power stations, or airport expansion, and yet bemoan high energy bills and long queues at passport control. We are, in the coming years, likely to object strongly to the exploitation of shale gas in the UK, too, which as we explain in this week's cover feature is set to take off.
Given some of the problems report as a result of this controversial drilling technique, popularly dubbed 'fracking', I'd argue in this case that there is genuine cause for concern - exploding tap water in the US, and earthquakes in Blackpool are hardly normal after all, and the population has a right to know that any drilling is being conducted safely. But just like the revival of housebuilding or a second runway at Stansted, unlocking shale gas could be economically transformational for the UK, just as it has been in the US, where industry is benefiting from cheap and plentiful supplies of gas developed over the last decade. Given the UK's economic predicament, such potential cannot be ignored, even if it means the views across our back yards won't be as pretty as they once were.
