RE: How Oaklands College intends to get around not being allowed to sell its Agricultural site to property developers.

Oaklands College has financial problems. It wanted to sell off its agricultural site to pay its debts but this was refused because the land is Green Belt.

It has now announced that it will tear down its college buildings on the city campus to sell the land to property developers. In the next breath it says it will have to relocate its students to the agricultural site. What a surprise. It then says the development will be "low level".

The proposed Oaklands Agricultural Site development will replace semi-permanent buildings such as greenhouses which can always be removed to return the land to its original condition.

Once the college is rebuilt on the agricultural site the Green Belt land is lost forever. It is also the "thin end of the wedge" style of policy implementation that is widely taught on management courses.

This is for two reasons. Firstly the low level development will not be the only work carried out. It will be accompanied by ancilliary works such as the tarmacking of land to provide car parking and the erection of signs and lighting. Later down the line the "low level buildings" can be demolished and replaced with larger buildings. The Green Belt land is lost forever.

This is the ingenious (but not original) way Oaklands College intends to get around not being allowed to sell its Agricultural site to property developers.

The problem is that the law allows schools and hospitals to be built on Green Belt land. In the course of time these can then be pulled down and the land sold to developers, as we have seen with the local hospital sites which were once Green Belt land.

We have a simple choice. Our population is rising and we can concrete over the whole of the south east. Our country will end up resembling the urban sprawl found in countries like Japan. Or we put aside our political differences and for the common good work together at least on a local level to fight back against the Oaklands development plan and anything similar that is proposed.

Is there anyone reading this letter motivated enough to help organise the necessary action?

Bob Goodall, Belmont Hill, St Albans.