To protect and preserve our local residential community and wildlife from unnecessary development and willful environmental vandalism. 

Birchwood School has been working on plans together with the Bishop’s Stortford Football Club to build upon one of the very few last green lungs of Bishop’s Stortford, the field adjacent to Pearse House, Parsonage Lane, Dunmow Road and Raynham Road. The site was transferred from EHDC to the School and has a restrictive covenant on it.

To this end the plans being formulated by Birchwood and the Bishops Stortford Football Club  (currently at the pre-app stage) have been kept under wraps and I am sorry to say that numerous local residents have been mislead on numerous occasions once the idea had leaked into the public domain. Consultation so far has been paid lip service; in my opinion it is more like a dictatorship, residents have never been asked what they would like, simply dictated to. 

The Deputy Principal of the School, Charles Gilbank has now admitted that work on this scheme was started 5 years ago, in 2015, when two majestic ancient oak trees were felled. I witnessed the results of this destruction. Whilst one of the trees was diseased, the other was at least 7ft in diameter and was a perfectly healthy oak tree, probably in the order of 500 years old.  Regrettably, there were no TPO’s on these trees and the second, healthy oak was felled when the Hertfordshire tree officer was on holiday, I have asked for a freedom of information request for any notes made at the time by East Herts.  Barn owls that once inhabited these oaks are no longer heard calling.

Earlier this year 2021, the scrub and bramble undergrowth around the margins of the site, which provided cover and food sources for numerous insects, pollinators, birds, bats and foxes, was cleared during the bird nesting season.  There is no longer a morning chorus as all the birds have been displaced. There will be no food for the birds to eat this winter as all the brambles which produce blackberries as an autumn food source have been decimated from the periphery of the field.

A fox den was unearthed by an excavator, and a traumatised and bewildered fox was seen wandering the field having just had his home and foraging resources decimated.

These creatures do not have a voice of their own, but bats their roosts and their foraging areas are fully protected by UK and European legislation through their inclusion in Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, offences being punishable with fines up to £5,000 and up to 6 months imprisonment. There is a requirement to apply for a natural England bat licence prior to commencing works. 

Educators should be teaching their students to respect nature, not tarmac it over with car parking spaces and artificial turf, which will have detrimental effects on drainage and flooding in this era of global warming and less predictable weather events.  I would urge that any infringement be enforced to the maximum to put a stop to developers running roughshod over existing legislation, and be held to account for their actions. 

If you care about our global environment then please support this petition and encourage your contacts to do the same.