Our Christmas newsletter - let’s keep up the fight!

To all our supporters - thank you, thank you for all your efforts this year in our fight to stop Eton building a huge new 3,000-house new town on the edge of the South Downs National Park.

We are excited to be ending 2021 on a very positive note with Lewes District Council’s unanimous rejection of the Nolands Farm proposal to build 86 houses on land right next to the Eton site. We are cautiously optimistic that this is a good sign! More than 600 individuals objected to the scheme with council planners recommending refusal on the grounds that it would cause “a detrimental impact on the character and appearance” of Plumpton Green village as well as the “wider countryside.” The Council's rejection of Nolands Farm shows public consultation works - and we hope that that the far larger Eton scheme will get similarly short shrift from our elected representatives.

Ten months of campaigning

March 2021 – The publication of Eton’s plans to build 3,000 houses on a 500-acre site at East Chiltington shocked local residents. Marketing whizz and concerned environmentalist Marc Munier realised the scheme would devastate the area and roared into action, swiftly forming a core committee of around 15 volunteers to fight the scheme. Over the next few weeks, Don’t Urbanise the Downs (DUTD) was up and running, galvanising widespread support from all over East Sussex and beyond.

Committee members designed placards, built a website, set up social media pages, fired off letters to MPs and alerted the media. Hundreds donated to help fund the campaign and stories about “greedy Eton” hit the national news with stories in the Daily Mail, the Times and the Telegraph.

April-June – the campaign continued to gain traction and, by end June, had 2,000 supporters. Protestors came from all walks of life and included lawyers and academics, farmworkers, NHS staff, artists and more than 50 teachers. Roadside placards started appearing all over the area while local MPs and councillors pledged their support. Late June – the news that a vitally important sea trout population could be wiped out by the Eton scheme made national headlines with widespread coverage and a p3 story in the Observer. Richard Vobes, aka The Bald Explorer, also pledged his support with a video on his popular YouTube channel.

July–August - On July 9, Lewes District Council released its "Issues and Options" public consultation for the new Local Plan. We rallied supporters to get involved resulting in 2,500+ people sending their comments to the Council – a huge response. DUTD also hosted a series of informative, local drop-in days in Plumpton, Wivelsfield Green, Ditchling, Cooksbridge and Lewes. Local artist Grant DeJonge set light to his painting to protest Eton’s plans and August flooding hit the headlines with road closures and traffic chaos.

September-November – By September the campaign had 5,000 members, with another 2,000 supporters on Facebook. More than 600 signs had been put up around the local area and 10,000 leaflets handed out. We were encouraged by Boris Johnson’s pledge at the Conservative Party conference to protect the countryside, saying “all new building developments should take place "not on green fields" but on "brownfield sites in places where homes make sense”.

December – We launched a new drive urging supporters to lobby the new Secretary of State for Housing asking him to scrap the Standard Method, the Government’s system of calculating housing figures which is based on incorrect and outdated 2014 population projections. We also celebrated Lewes District Council’s unanimous rejection of the 86-house Nolands Farm proposal on land next to the Eton site.

Looking ahead – and how you can help

In Spring 2022, Lewes District Council will launch a new public consultation having reviewed all the comments from last summer’s Issues & Options phase. This will be our next area of focus.

We have come a long way and have already achieved a huge amount but we still need more members to help us carry on the fight. The Council's rejection of the Nolands Farm scheme - after receving more than 600 objections from the public – shows just how effective protest can be so do encourage your friends, family and neighbours to sign up; our strength is in numbers so let’s get our numbers up!

If you can spare a few quid to support the campaign financially, that would also be a real help; more funds mean we can increase our advertising budget and spread the word still further. Do click here to donate.

We are so grateful to all those who have supported our fight to stop Eton’s rapacious scheme. The battle isn’t over yet so please keep going. If you’re local and have some free time over the holidays, do go for a walk around the site. There are footpaths that go right across the land and Novington Lane passes right through it - so you can see for yourself how truly lovely this area is.