“What’s going on is so obviously wrong and none of our elected office holders are doing anything about it. None of them have done anything.”Īs a resident of the village, Fulton said he has been left feeling angry. “We’ve had three different MPs, all of whom have come to visit the ponds. “We started noticing issues as far back as 2015,” Fulton said. None of our elected office holders are responding, they are hiding.”Ĭonstruction work at Northstowe, north-west of Cambridge. The same campaigners have been granted a judicial review of the development of 4,000 homes in a forthcoming phase of the new town’s development.īut as the water levels remain at record low levels, Hayden and the campaigners in Longstanton are desperate, claiming Homes England, the Environment Agency, South Cambs district council and private developers are ignoring their pleas for help.ĭaniel Fulton, 41, an environmental campaigner and resident of Longstanton, said: “First, all the ponds in the village were drying up. Hayden said the less profitable fruit and vegetables they grow – raspberries, gooseberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers – would provide a local, sustainable source of food for the future residents of the new town but this is in jeopardy.Īn independent report, commissioned by South Cambridgeshire district council, concluded last year that construction work was to blame for emptying ponds in Longstanton of their water, which campaigners said had a knock-on effect on wildlife. “It’s going to get a hell of a lot worse,” he said. Hayden claims a future phase of the development – will lower the water level “upwater” of his farm by up to 2 metres. New homes being built in Northstowe, south Cambridgeshire. We’re trying to grow fruit and vegetables instead.” “But now with the flow of the water coming across my property being taken away due to what they did on phase one, I’ve got no water. “We used to grow pot plants in the greenhouse twice a year, tens of thousands of them, we had the irrigation to do that,” Hayden said. Hayden has reduced the amount of flowers he grows each year and is troubled by the impact later phases of development are likely to have on the groundwater in his property, which he says he has a legally protected right to access. However, L&Q denies any of the work could have led to long-term issues with groundwater levels. The developer, L&Q, which worked with Homes England’s predecessor on the first phase of the development, had to lower the water levels in order to build on the land, a process known as dewatering. Hayden has been approached to sell his land but the 65-year-old refused, the emotional investment in the land his father farmed well into his 80s being too high.
It has killed birch trees and emptied ponds, depriving wildlife of habitat.
Northstowe, a flagship development being led by the government’s housing agency, Homes England, will contain 10,000 homes when it is finished but campaigners claim the construction of the first 1,000 has already sucked away the groundwater from Larksfield Nursery and natural spaces surrounding Longstanton. But the development of the biggest new town since Milton Keynes on his farm’s borders is putting an end to that.
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