Filed 14 May 2026

Another Field, Another Housing Development

So there’s another one. Another field, somewhere in Burntwood, with plans for a housing estate slapped on it. That makes it the fourth one going through at the minute. I might be one behind though; they’re popping up like branches of Co-Op, faster than I can keep track. At this rate, there will be nowhere left to turn into dog walking paddocks.

I won’t say which field, because at this rate it barely matters. Pick any field, because if it’s not that one now, it will be by the time this Government’s had its way. They all come with the same three hundred houses, the same “affordable” quota nobody’s checked the definition of, and the same fancy bit of government wordplay about the land not really being green belt any more, not that anyone from round here had a say in inventing that word, or setting the housing numbers, or drawing the line on the map — somebody’s getting the blame for it regardless, and I’ve decided who.

They’ve had another go at saving it since, mind. Someone’s putting in for the field to be recognised as of special historical interest, on account of something happening there once. I’m not sure what; history’s not my thing. It could have involved a cow. Or a royal. Or maybe both. But someone important clearly knows, and if somebody knows and says it matters, that’s good enough for me. Stands to reason nothing should ever be built on a field with that sort of history behind it, whatever it turns out to be, and I’ll thank anyone who says different to explain why they think they know better than whoever it was that raised it in the first place.

And it’s not just the field that’s had a sudden makeover. The campaign against new houses appears to have got itself a writer. Four paragraphs on the group’s page a fortnight ago, and now every post runs to about twenty, with headings and everything, very professional; you could tell someone had put the hours in. I skimmed it myself; obviously. Nobody’s got time to read all that. But you could see how thorough it was just from the shape of it. Sub-headings, a summary bit at the top, some words I’d not seen before, the whole works. Whoever’s writing it now deserves a medal, that’s what I say.

Because here’s the thing nobody else seems bothered about: I’ve been walking the dog across whichever one of these fields it is for years, without once checking whose it actually was, and now some housebuilder’s going to fence it off and call that progress just so some poor millennial yoga teacher can afford her first house. And where exactly am I meant to park outside the chip shop once every last one of these estates is full of people with cars? Nobody’s thought about that. Because nobody round here thinks it through like I do.