In collaboration with Stop SGC

I don’t want to see what amounts to a whole extra town slapped on the side of Frome that provides no benefit to it whatsoever & sucks the life out of the existing strained infrastructure. I don’t want to see animals losing their homes. I don’t want Frome to be filled with cars choking up the roads and filling the air with pollution. I don’t want to lose nearly 160 acres of prime farmland to bricks & tarmac especially when we are in a climate crisis and need to protect our green spaces & farmland for the future. I don’t want to see the river being polluted with run-off. I don’t want to see poor quality housing built without sustainability at its core when there are amazing examples of carbon-neutral housing being built elsewhere. And I don’t want to see those same poor quality houses having to be retrofitted in a few years to enable them to comply with new energy policies.- Anonymous

It is peaceful and full of nature, and the sounds of nature, and what can be better than that, particularly in this day and age when green spaces are even more important than ever before to our physical and mental health. I also think that these fields will be vital for food security in the future when the real horror of the climate crisis hits us and we’ll need to grow food locally. -Anonymous

I am truly horrified to think that Mendip might permit this development as a quick fix to their future housing quota despite the fact that the need for these types of housing is decreasing – more social and truly affordable housing is needed, not open-market housing which will probably be bought by rich landlords to rent out at extortionate prices to the very Frome folk who need social and affordable housing. I think also if it were to go ahead more housing would be built elsewhere on farmland around Frome despite the Govt now saying that houses must not be built on green fields. – Anonymous

I have walked my dog past or in these fields most days for the last 15 years and to me they are my escape from stress/ work worries/ technology/ being indoors.  I literally feel I can breathe when I get into these fields and am surrounded by nature.  I love walking in them in all weathers and noticing the changing seasons, picking blackberries and wild garlic and admiring the spring blossoms, autumn colours and summer wild flowers.  I also bird watch and have seen snowy owls, herons, white egrets, buzzards and red kites and once rescued a baby crow who’d fallen out of the nest.
I was even lucky enough to photograph an otter who came and checked out my dog in one of the fields near a brook. – Rebecca

It will impact my life to such an extent that I am even considering selling up and moving out.  I do not want to have to drive to be able to walk my dog, I want to have easy, walking access to fields and nature.  It is vitally important to me and will severely affect my well being.  Several fields that I used to walk through have already been built on and the size of SGC will be so detrimental to the already tipping balance of urban and natural space in Frome. – Rebecca

Frome is a lovely balanced old town, it needs its green lungs inside the town boundaries and these fields should not even be considered until all the old brownfield sites are sued up-of course that makes it more expensive for the developers who the try and influence the planners-often illegally.- John

this isn’t about direct consequences though it is about adding 20% to the towns population – John

It’s not just that they’re beautiful or an asset to dog-walkers, ramblers etc it’s what they represent in terms of our vanishing countryside. Everywhere in the country green-space is being eroded for these poorly designed, ill-conceived land grabs that just produce the same ugly box houses and road centred estates. -Lollie

I feel like they belong to us – the community – but what we want and what matters to us is less important than the money changing hands under the table. We could really make something of the land. Re-wild it, extend the hedgerows, take what we can’t grow on and use it to create a new nature reservation. There’s so much missed opportunity. – Lollie

It will be extremely hard to watch such a huge swathe of land turn into a building site, and knowing all the while that it won’t become anything like their advertising pitch. That’s not to mention the increased traffic it will bring. We already have polluted air and congestion problems, I don’t want it to get any worse. I’m also concerned that it will become even harder to be seen by a doctor or dentist as our services are so overwhelmed as it stands.
Overall it’s going to change the experience of living in Frome – we won’t be a small town anymore and I’m afraid it won’t feel like home. – Lollie

Frome is in the heart of a beautiful area of Somerset but it already takes far too long to walk into the countryside, across nasty and dangerous busy roads. In this area of Frome is particularly difficult to find quiet walks and adding a further huge estate would make the quality of all our lives a lot worse, adding traffic, noise, more people to already very quickly changing and expanding town. The infrastructure is not there to support a further 1700 households, the schools are already full and the Drs impossible to gain access too. With that many more inhabitants Fromes well known supportive community will be pushed over the edge into increasingly unsupported services and disarray. -Nicola

The environmental impact of this building work clearly has not been considered by the developers. The energy needed to build these new homes is clearly unwarranted. It will be destructive to our community which is precious to so many. I have seen many birds of prey over these fields, from Kites to Buzzards and the recent visitation of the Eagle. I know that Red Kites nest in the tree along the bottom of the fields – all this wildlife would loose its home and at this crucial time for our small creatures and birds this I would hope would be criminal ecocide.
I am definitely prepared to take a stand against this development and to defend Frome from this unthought through and destructive proposal. – Nicola

I joined stop SGC as the proposals  are completely out of step with a town the size of Frome and coupled with the dramatic and inappropriate changes to local government in Somerset citizens are denied the right to have decisions taken locally.- John

Photography by Summer Auty