Baroness Beryl Platt of Writtle has made an emotional plea for Essex villages and the countryside to be saved from developers.

Her plea comes at a time when pressures are building to change Green Belt boundaries -- many unaltered since 1957 -- through the new Essex Structure Plan.

The former Essex County Council chairman was defending the Green Belt at the Examination in Public into the proposed new plan, held at Christ Church, New London Road, Chelmsford, on Tuesday

It needed rigorously defending, she said, because it had done good service to Chelmsford and other towns, Essex and Britain -- saving countryside and communities in a permanent and popular way.

"When I was on the rural council in the 1960s, the clerk told me that the only way to defend ourselves was to support the Green Belt always," said Baroness Platt.

"We must never be weak over it, or developers will appeal and appeal until it is eaten away.

"There is much derogatory talk of Essex girl and Essex man, but my husband and I are just that and we believe in our beautiful county of attractive villages and market towns separated by rolling green areas.

"Development must be in the towns, reusing sites and making use of empty properties and homes above shops, and bringing back life to centres like Chelmsford at night."

Borough planner Derek Stebbing said: "Green Belt policy and boundaries in Essex -- especially Chelmsford -- need reviewing because it has 'skewed' development of the town to the north and east.

"This is the crunch for Chelmsford.

We cannot sustain further development or meet our housing allocations under this plan which, we believe, is fundamentally flawed because it has not addressed the issue of the Green Belt.

"All the Green Belt towns in the south of the county need to review their boundaries to accommodate their housing and industry allocations and we, with 50 per cent of our borough in the Green Belt, need to do so too."

Andrew Martin Associates, Chelmsford consultants for Countryside Properties, backed a review -- even submitting a suggested county plan policy -- but not for Chelmsford.

"Chelmsford is no special case and towns do not have to develop symmetrically,"said the company's Kevin Coleman.

"Chelmsford has much land to be brought forward in the north and east."

Examination chairman Chris Offord asked: "Are you not saying that because your clients have land in north-east Chelmsford?"

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.