Brett Ellis has been battling with Hertsmere Council

We work, we come home, we try to do our best by those around us and many are God-fearing (that last bit is not true for me, but makes for better copy), and yet incumbents come to attack us daily: Be they the government, the council, officialdom or criminality.

For me, and many locally, the latest harbinger of angst is Hertsmere Council, once more, as they stealthily announce, for the second time, that they plan to offload their housing quota on the border of our village.

To cut a long and ultimately dull story short: The Tory-led council in 2017, not wanting to upset their voter base in towns such as Borehamwood and Potters Bar plotted to dump their ‘local plan’ housing target of 6,000 new homes on 2,000 acres of green belt land (four times the size of the London Olympic Park).

They refused to engage in consultation with those most impacted, namely the residents of London Colney and Colney Heath, just over the ’border’ in neighbouring St Albans.

Hertsmere MP, Oliver Dowden, now chair of the Tory party and self-proclaimed ‘defender of the green belt’ refused to oppose the plans, and they purposely made dissent as difficult as they could through a cumbersome and less than user-friendly online consultation system.

With two weeks left of the consultation, there were 4,000 objections and then, knights in techie shining armour came along with a pre-populated email objection form and the figure rose to 18,000 objections, proving enough to stop their dastardly plan dead in its tracks.

Brett Ellis has been battling with Hertsmere Council

The local plan was shelved and we put away our pitch forks, until, that is, last month, when the new ruling Labour party in Hertsmere, along with their Lib Dem co-councillors who were also previously opposed, produced a new plan again targeting Bowmans Cross under the boast that they were ‘minimising the impact on the local green belt’ by ‘only’ planning to desecrate, forever, 1,200 acres of our local green belt.

Despite having been vocally against the plan in previous years, they had jumped ship and were again making the online objection portal as difficult as is feasibly possible (it now takes over 170 minutes to object to each planned development individually as you cannot object to the plans in their entirety) as they again refused, and then ignored, our requests to cross the border into St Albans to consult with those it will impact with most leaving the only viable source of objection as an email.

Disingenuous? Yes. Slippery: You betcha! Turncoats? Of the highest order, and, having seen how the Hertsmere Labour party have acted to protect their minor political careers, it leaves you wishing you too could drop out and become the hermit who doesn’t have the heart for yet another prolonged battle to maintain the status quo.

• Brett Ellis is a teacher.