Campaigners lay out battle plans for 'last opportunity' to block Sheffield greenbelt houses
Campaigners called on Sheffield residents to help them stop a controversial greenbelt housing plan in the wake of inspectors giving it the go-ahead. writes Lysia Wright.
Protestors from the Save Our Greenbelt Action Group met on March 5 at Grenoside Community Centre to lay out battle plans in what speaks called their “last opportunity” to keep developers out
Protester Mark Ash urged residents to contact their local councillor to ask them to oppose the plan, a vote which may be held in July.
He also asked residents to submit brownfield sites through the campaign’s website so the group can highlight alternative locations to the council.
If the council approves the plan, Joe Birkby said the group will submit a statutory challenge within the following six-week period.
Mr Birkby said: “If we miss the legal window, then the opportunity’s gone, and the plan comes into force, and we have no real prospect of stopping the plan in its tracks.
“We have to do everything now.”
Sheffield City Council has put forward 14 sites in green belt for more than 3,500 homes and employment land as part of a blueprint for development called the Local Plan.
The plans have been protested by resident action groups, who were dealt a blow in January 2026 when inspectors declared there was no legal reason to oppose the housing scheme.
Since the plans were published in April 2024, the Save Our Greenbelt Action Group has raised £23,156, which has mostly been spent on a barrister to represent them at hearings.
They now claim to need another £60,000 to £70,000 for legal fees, a fundraising challenge that Mr Birkby believes is possible and important to achieve.
He said: “This is my home. I grew up here. A number of my schoolteachers are here in the audience.
“It’s gonna be a marathon, not a sprint, but I would rather face the next three years fighting the council through the court system for the place that I love than spend the next decade watching all our farms, the green belt and the local countryside disappear.”
After hearing the inspectors approved the plans in January, campaigner Jo Tunstall shared how the group felt.
She said: “We were very disappointed. We have worked out as a group how many hours we spent as volunteers, and we are not a big group, but it is somewhere in the region of 10,000 hours.
“When you have put that level of effort in to get nothing but hell – it angered and upset us.”
The campaigners believe the development is an unfair distribution, as nine of the 14 sites are in S35.
They also shared why the plans concern them as they face “13 to 14 years of building sites”, an increase in traffic and air pollution, and claims that 75 per cent of the land to be built on is active farmland.