Not In My Back Yard

Olly Mann squares up toa new enemy—planning applications in his neighbourhood

I think I might be a NIMBY. This is rather hard for me to accept, because that acronym (Not In My Back Yard) is typically used as a slur; a pejorative label deployed to smear someone as selfish and two-faced. I even recall when I first heard the word—in a school geography class, some 30 years ago.

The way my teacher explained, it was that UK property developers are frequently frustrated by hypocritical homeowners, who claim to be in favour of progress (new housing, wind farms, whatever), but then vociferously object when actual proposals emerge to develop such things in their postcodes. How parsimonious, I thought! How self-centred!

As a young adult I lived in London, so never had cause to revise my opinion. Planning disputes were something I encountered only as a sidebar in the Evening Standard: a rock star wanting to build a swimming pool in their cellar, or a corporation applying to erect an even taller skyscraper than the one across the street. Nothing that affected me, nor gave me cause for soul-searching.

But then I moved to the green belt. Our three-bed semi—the first house I bought, and the one I intend to still call home when I die—is surrounded by fields and situated in the first Hertfordshire village you come to as you head out of London up the A1.