IN response to Hilary McGrady’s article “save the countryside” (Oxford Mail, September 26), I fancy she doth protest too much in her personal opinion, mirroring that of the National Trust, that the Government’s suggested changes to the planning system and greenfield development will lead to unchecked development.

The National Trust appears to me to be guilty of double standards in terms of the countryside and land usage. It canvassed by mail its 3.6 million members, as well as an online web petition, when it is infinitely as culpable by profiteering from selling off hundreds of acres of greenbelt land for housing developments in direct contradiction of their spurious petition attempts.

As far back as 2003, the National Trust was and is planning to sell hundreds of acres of land near historic buildings to private developers, which may have escaped many of the members’ and the public’s notice.

Like the Clivedon Village project, an impressive gated 200-house executive village built in 360-odd acres of the Clivedon estate, land donated to the trust by Lord Astor.

Not just a simple double standard, as the development is undertaken in partnership between them and a company called Countryside Properties, despite thousands of objections by residents and trust members. Similarly, the trust is proposing to sell off land at Dunham Massey, Manchester, for a development of 650 homes and no doubt has similar plans elsewhere in the country.

I believe the Government is right to change the planning laws.

For years they have remained a minefield of obstruction, denial, procrastination, and protection of vested interests and greenfield protectionists’ endeavours to bury rational truth and fact by such obsfurcation and diversion onto palliative solutions de jour.

Such protectionists would have us believe it is sacrilege to provide housing on greenfield sites but the unfortunate fact is people need affordable homes and if no brownfield sites exist or are suitable for development, then greenfield sites should be within the planning scopes without undue or prejudicial opposition.

The current system is, of course, beneficial to developers as it helps to unfairly drive up the cost of all and any land available.

To put the matter in context, while it is difficult to provide firm and precise data for total land acreage, both arable and non-arable in the UK, or to establish who actually owns it, (at least 50 per cent of the land, happily for those who own it, remains a mystery, whereby it remains unregistered) there are approximately 60 million acres of land in England, Wales and Scotland, where roughly 90 per cent of the population live on ten per cent of the available land.

The largest institutional landowners are the Forestry Commission, with 2.4 million acres, the MOD 750,000 acres, the National Trust 550,000 acres, the Church of England 155,000 acres, the Crown Estate 400,000 acres, and minor and major aristocrats some 536,000 acres.

I am sure that a small proportion of the 60 million acres could be set aside for housing development without it becoming a blot on the landscape, contrary to what vested interests would have us believe.

COLIN HEWETSON The Ridings Kidlington