Protecting countryside from encroachment of urbanisation

The purpose of green belt land is to assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment. Changing green fields into on large urban sprawl is adding to creeping suburbanisation of the west of the Borough threatening to merge with Ash and Tongham urban area. Key to this is the ability of the land between Normandy and Flexford settlements to maintain the "openness" of the Green Belt, keeping it permanently open (NPPF Para 79). The land parcel H12 is evaluated in the Green Belt & Countryside Study Vol 5 as contributing the to three of the five purposes of the Green Belt (see NPPF para 80) and further evaluated by more recent work in the GBCS as having special sensitivity ("red") and consequently flagged as inappropriate for development.