Racecourse at centre of 'urban sprawl' debate

Concerns over development at Surrey racecourse have fuelled a debate about housing spreading into the countryside.

Plans to build homes on Kempton Park Racecourse in Sunbury-on-Thames were first announced in 2017, and Spelthorne MP Lincoln Jopp has said developers are preparing to "reactivate" proposals.

In May, Jopp warned against the plans, adding that Kempton Park was a "vital" area of green space.

Developers Barratt Redrow said that it was considering whether the racecourse could help deliver "much needed new housing", while The Jockey Club said that no planning application had been made and the racecourse remained focused on hosting racing.

It comes as CPRE London, a regional branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, warned that building on green land has driven urban sprawl, increasing car reliance and weakening town centres.

It has called for more homes to be built on existing urban land instead.

Kempton Park Racecourse is subject to an option agreement signed in 2018, giving housebuilder Redrow the right to buy the site if planning permission is secured, with the agreement currently set to run until 2028.

While campaigning for elections earlier this year, Jopp said that developers were preparing to build more than 2,000 homes on the site.

The MP said that the racecourse was on a floodplain and claimed that there had been "no discussion about infrastructure".

A spokesperson for The Jockey Club said: "Any residential development would be dependent on planning approval, and as that process has not started, the focus for Kempton Park continues to be on hosting racing next year and into the future."

Redrow said that it had been reviewing whether the site, or parts of it, could assist with the delivery of "much needed" new housing in Surrey.

Campaigners said that developments built further from town centres often lacked adequate public transport links, leading to greater car use and contributing to the decline of local high streets.

Alice Roberts, of CPRE London, said: "Despite the devastating impact of urban sprawl being well-known, we've really been asleep at the wheel in terms of letting it happen.

"This has been the forgotten disaster of the last 50 years."

She added that there was a "huge amount" of space in towns across England given to surface carparking, adding that it was a "poor use of land".

"Extraordinarily, there is 50 hectares of land allocated for surface parking in Guildford, and both Staines and Working have more than 20 hectares," she told BBC Radio Surrey.

"We are not saying you need to use all of it, but it would be a good idea to use some of that instead of countryside which is for productive farmland."