This is about a growing threat to our countryside, our heritage and our communities.
It is about a back door attempt to avoid all the carefully devised protections put in place so we may all continue to enjoy the most beautiful places in our country.
It is about somebody cynically making a pile of money – over a million – in just a few weeks, leaving behind fragmented ownership of woodland vulnerable to piecemeal exploitation and/or neglect. Land blighted for generations, with no single custodian, with multiple plots, pock-marked by sheds and fences. Not that they will care.
This is being inflicted on us by we know not who. That’s right – we have no idea who is behind this. Nationality? Money-laundering? Simply ruthless and greedy? Unbelievably, it is not possible for us to identify who is responsible.
But the auctioneers, their accomplices in this ruination of places we hold most dear, they know: but they’re not saying – or if some of them do say, it is with evasion or untruth.
And, most shocking, all this is legal. (Just). It shouldn’t be.
We want you to share our anger and spread the word so that it becomes a national priority to make this practice illegal
