East Coker, Somerset: 2500 New Homes on Agricultural Land near Yeovil?

Farming Today (BBC Radio 4) this morning featured the case of East Coker, Somerset (listen from around the 2.18 mark) and proposals to build 2,500 new homes on agricultural land around East Coker, connecting it to Yeovil.

Associations with T. S. Eliot have rallied the opposition to this plan, just as proposals to build new houses near Thomas Hardy's Max Gate and William Barnes' Old Rectory have sparked protests in Dorchester.

Farming Today, programme information:

"On Farming Today This Week, Charlotte Smith is in Somerset to see how new government planning rules could affect the countryside. She visits the village of East Coker, last resting place of T S Eliot, which is at the centre of a controversial planning dispute. The District Council is proposing to build 2500 houses on agricultural land connecting the village to Yeovil as part of a local development plan. Under the National Policy Planning Framework, local authorities are required to draw up plans for housing expansion. If they don't do this, developers can appeal and go over their heads to get the go-ahead. Charlotte Smith hears from both sides and the Planning Mnister, Nick Boles. Presented by Charlotte Smith. Produced by Anna Varle".

In The Times today, there is an interview (pp 40-41) with Sir Andrew Motion, the former Poet Laureate, President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

Rachel Sylvester writes:

'Sir Andrew fears that the National Planning Policy Framework is turning into a builder's charter, with profit being put before beauty and history. "You go to Dorchester and somebody wants to build on the field that Thomas Hardy walked across to go to William Barnes' funeral."'

The writer of the lead article agrees, up to a point:

'Sir Andrew is quite right to express horror that anybody should wish to "build on the field that Thomas Hardy walked across to go to William Barnes' funeral"....But he is wrong on the far more prosaic matter of rural second homes.'