The Oxted & Limpsfield Residents’ Group, which works closely with CPRE Surrey, has launched the latest phase of its “Save the Green Belt” campaign. Last weekend a total of 983 local residents signed up to save the area’s beautiful green fields, and more are signing all the time, a fantastic demonstration of the determination there is locally to preserve the environment from destruction by developers.

A new website has been created by CPRE supporters in Bookham and Effingham to provide an online forum for local people who want to defend the Green Belt and are concerned by the growing development pressures in and around Bookham in particular. Please visit this excellent new website: www.handsoffthegreenbelt.com and twitter @sosgreenbelt

The Metropolitan Green Belt, which covers most of Surrey, is a vital national institution and “we don’t have the right” to give up Green Belt areas for development. That was the message from Crispin Blunt, MP for Reigate, at the CPRE Surrey conference at Dorking Halls on Saturday (18 May). “This is London’s Green Belt and we don’t have the right to give it away to developers” Mr Blunt told the conference. It is all that stops London spreading out and expanding “all the way down into Sussex”, he added.

The future of Surrey’s Green Belt and countryside will come under the spotlight at a major conference in Dorking this weekend. Reigate MP Crispin Blunt, Surrey County Councillors Ian Beardsmore and Jonathan Essex, and Caterham neighbourhood forum’s Chris Windridge, will be among the guest speakers at the event hosted by CPRE at the Dorking Halls on Saturday 18 May. On the agenda will be the threatened loss of Green Belt land across Surrey as development pressures grow and local councils struggle to balance the protection of countryside with the targets imposed on the districts for new housebuilding.

Countryside campaigners have won permission for a full Judicial Review of Mole Valley District Council’s decision to allow the development of a golf and leisure complex at Cherkley Court near Leatherhead. Members of the Cherkley Campaign and CPRE Surrey Branch were at the High Court on 24th April for a hearing to determine whether the case should go to trial. The judge agreed with the Cherkley Campaign’s lawyers that there is an arguable case against MVDC with regard to the decision on Cherkley, and gave permission for the case to be brought to trial as soon as possible. He also renewed a Court injunction instigated by the Cherkley Campaign which imposes restrictions on the construction work that can be carried out on-site pending the outcome of the Judicial Review.