A flock of goldfinches circle before settling on a rooftop as Sue takes her morning walk around the Woodgate estate in Pease Pottage, West Sussex. Rounding a corner, she reaches a large wildlife pond where eight signets and a swan are feeding. Dragonflies circle overhead.
For the last three years, the estate a few miles south of Crawley built within the High Weald area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) has been Sue’s home. Her son and daughter-in-law also live on the estate, where the 600 homes range from shared ownership flats to £1.4m luxury detached houses.
Cycleways, leisure parks, a village green and wildlife ponds give the estate a lush and green backdrop.
maps showing comparison between land built on in September 2018 and March 2025 and indicating the housing development
Analysis by the Guardian found that the estate was the largest land grab of an AONB by developers in Britain in the five years between 2018 and 2023.
At 45 hectares, the development sprawls across the High Weald AONB. These precious, natural landscapes, which have been renamed national landscapes, are supposed to be some of the country’s most protected areas.
There are 42 across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, awarded the designation for qualities including their relative wildness, tranquillity and any distinctive habitats they may support.
The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) fiercely fought the plans for the Woodgate estate, saying it created a worrying precedent and appeared to undermine the protections behind national landscape designation.
Kia Trainor, a director at the CPRE’s Sussex branch, described the development as the “desecration of our most beautiful landscape’”. In a later report, the CPRE released data showing that AONBs were facing an insidious threat in the form of a dramatic increase in major housing applications.
Sue, on her walk with her friend Sarah, however, points out the large village green at the centre of the development, the pathways, the primary school and community shop, before heading into the woodland walk that takes you into the depths of Tilgate Forest, which is next to the estate.
The development sprawls across the High Weald area of outstanding natural beauty. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
“We were just saying to each other how beautifully they have created this estate,” Sue says. “There are big open spaces and we see a lot of wildlife. The large pond at the bottom of the estate is amazing, it has brought in so much wildlife.
“Before this estate was built, the land was farmland and they held a car boot sale here. This estate is great for children with all the open space, they can cycle and walk everywhere. They are planting an orchard here and creating a walking trail, which goes all around the development, and a games field for ball games.”
The developers, Thakeham, told the Guardian that from the beginning they integrated infrastructure, biodiversity, and green spaces and pathways into the design. “Wildlife-friendly enhancements such as bird boxes, bat boxes, swift bricks, hedgehog highways, and insect hotels can be found across the development,” said a spokesperson. That includes the Meadow Maze, which includes over 50 varieties of wildflowers to attract pollinators and contributes to the broader B-Line project. “Thakeham made a commitment to deliver BNG of 10% on its developments three years before it became a statutory minimum in February 2024.”
Balancing housing requirements with the need to protect and enhance nature in the UK, where there have been significant declines in species and habitats since the 1970s and less than half of its original biodiversity remains intact, will always be difficult.
The 600-home estate has a large village green, primary school and community shop. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
Mid Sussex district council has assessed that it is required to build 19,741 new homes for the period 2021-40 to comply with national planning targets. Existing commitments will provide 8,696 homes and the council needs to find locations for the remaining 7,558.
The CPRE says there needs to be a balance of economic, social and environmental considerations and that building large developments away from existing residential areas will force people into cars and does not amount to sustainable development.
In addition, the UK has committed to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030 – a target contained in the Environment Act. But the Labour government’s determination to roll back environmental laws in its push for growth will put some of the UK’s most precious and protected land at risk of destruction by housebuilding, experts say.
Jackie Copley, a campaign lead for the CPRE, said: “Areas of outstanding natural beauty are supposed to enjoy the highest status of protection for landscape reasons and that is supposed to stop major development taking place on them. A development of 600 houses with a school and district centre is unarguably a major development.
‘The large pond at the bottom of the estate is amazing, it has brought in so much wildlife,’ resident Sue says. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
“Very soon if we continue to allow piecemeal developments across areas of outstanding natural beauty, they are going to cease to have any landscape value.”
Her words are prescient. Another large development within and adjacent to the High Weald national landscape is in the pipeline: 1,450 homes to be on agricultural land between Cuckfield and the village of Ansty.
As campaigners join the CPRE to fight the development, a High Weald national landscape officer has recently warned of serious adverse impacts from the proposed development, citing major effects on the landscape character, visual quality, and a failure to conserve and enhance the area’s natural beauty.
The Guardian’s Green to Grey team included Pamela Duncan, Zeke Hunter-Green, Tural Ahmedzade and Patrick Barkham with additional reporting by Rachel Keenan, Raphael Boyd, Olivia Lee, Yassin El-Moudden, Gracie Daw, Matthew Holmes, Mariam Amini, Gabriel Smith, Dominic Kendrick and Emma Russell
For more, visit greentogrey.eu
The next phase of this project will be planet-wide: join a crowdsourced citizen science initiative to measure global nature loss here
