Plans to build a motorway service station on green belt land on a site off the A41 near Kings Langley are scandalous.

We are now seeing the result of the Government’s decision to rip up the book on planning rules.

Such a scheme would have not seen the light of day not so long ago. But now the Government has taken away the protection afforded by green belt status, countryside is vulnerable to desecration as more and more building development rears its ugly head.

Aerial views over the intended site show fields already scarred. It looks as though work had already started and the motorway service station is already a done deal albeit yet to gain formal planning consent.

As seems to be the case with all new development sites, it is not a matter of ‘if’ - but ‘when’: how long the developers’ bulldozer must batter away at the door submitting endless proposals before planning is granted.

Already, there have been huge tracts of green belt land formerly for grazing in Croxley (off Rousebarn Lane, parallel to Rousebarn Lane) carved up to make space for the new Croxley Danes school.

One day, when a price is finally put on green space - trees, pastures, flora - the things that once made this a green and pleasant land and a better place to live - we will wake up to what we have lost.

Dave Degen

Whippendell Road, West Watford