How will Prime Minister Brown Respond to the Hands off Herts e-Petition?

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 28th Aug 2007

e-Petition Against Destruction of the Green Belt Around At Albans Closes Today http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/handsoffherts/

The "Hands Off Herts" e-petition, which was tabled on the Downing Street website by Sandy Walkington, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for St Albans, has attracted over 1500 on-line signatures, putting it firmly in the top two percent of the more than 8,000 different petitions on the Prime Minister's site.

"In addition the printed version of the petition, which was endorsed by the Hertfordshire Society branch of CPRE, has attracted thousands of signatures from local people," Sandy said. "This shows the very real opposition to over-development around St Albans. People just don't want to wake up and find themselves in a new Middlesex, overwhelmed by suburban sprawl"

"The Downing St e-petition process promises a response to all "serious" petitions provided there are more than 200 signatures. Well, we are now all waiting to see what the Prime Minister says."

Sandy Walkington pointed out that the new government has sent out conflicting signals about Green Belt protection. "In July, Gordon Brown in his first days as Labour leader pledged the government would "continue to protect robustly the land designated as green belt". But Communities Minister Hazel Blears told a parliamentary committee that house building took "priority" over environmental concerns and said she could not give "categoric assurances" about redrawing the green belt. She was contradicted by the Prime Minister's official spokesman.

"So the big question now is whether Gordon Brown will distance himself from Tony Blair's presumption that southern Hertfordshire could become one big building site."

"The e-petition closes today," Sandy Walkington said, "but the fight goes on. We will be taking the written petitions to Number 10. The Prime Minister, the Secretary of State, and Stevenage MP Barbara Follett, who is the grandiosely titled Minister for the East of England, all need to understand that building more suburbs over precious Green Belt is not a sane or sustainable answer to housing shortages."

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

For more information, please call Sandy Walkington on 07802 177317

Hands Off Herts logo attached

The petition - launched in March when Tony Blair was PM - asked that Prime Minister "prevent the destruction of rural Hertfordshire through opening up existing and precious Green Belt to unsustainable and inappropriate housing development which will overwhelm the local transport, school, health and water supply infrastructure and lead to the creation of "the London Borough of Hertfordshire"".

The supporting statement noted that "the original East of England plan proposed 79,600 dwellings for Hertfordshire; an Inspectors' Report recommended 83,200; the Secretary of State [then Ruth Kelly] wants at least another 10,000 on top of that figure, and possibly significantly more. Although she talks of preserving the integrity of the Green Belt there is no doubt that a significant proportion of these houses would have to be built on it. In particular it will lead to the "coalescence" of St Albans with Hemel Hempstead and Hatfield with the loss of 2,000 years of history."

The link to the Downing Street site is http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/handsoffherts/