In recent weeks and months it has become increasingly clear that our part of Mid Norfolk is being inundated with a large number of applications by developers for large scale housing developments, in many cases on a scale out of keeping with the rural identity and heritage of our very rural part of Norfolk. Of course every application needs to be considered by the planning process on the merits of its case, and the needs of the local community, which is why planning is rightly a matter for local councils and democratically elected local councillors, and not something MPs have any jurisdiction over.

But the scale and nature of development and infrastructure in an area like ours is of fundamental importance to our economy, community, heritage, identity and way of life - which makes it in my view an issue which MPs cannot simply wash our hands of. Having grown up in a small rural village in this area and started my working life in agriculture, I have long taken a very close interest in rural development and planning policy over the last 25 years. Eight years ago I set up The Norfolk Way - a not for profit campaign to promote the importance of a vibrant rural economy. With enlightened planning policies to promote smaller pockets of local housing for use by local people, small businesses back in the countryside and better broadband, mobile signal and road and rail links I believe we CAN have both a vibrant local economy and maintain our local heritage.

For too long our area has been treated by Government in Brussels and London as a rural backwater, with all too little investment and rural communities left to fend for ourselves, with beautiful rural landscape all too often concealing real but hidden rural deprivation and isolation. Of course we need 'development' – what society or civilisation in history has ever flourished without it? – but we need development which is appropriate to the area in question. The answer isn't to dump massive housing estates or industrial scale wind farms on a rural area like ours. We need a more local and organic approach to deliver vibrant villages and thriving towns.

That's why I have gone out of my way over the last 8 years as an active local Candidate and now MP to fight and successfully stop inappropriate development such as the wind energy substation at Little Dunham, the development of the Tiffey Valley in Wymondham or the wind farm at Shipdham.

For all its many flaws, our planning system (which in my view is far too much about 'development control' rather than real 'planning' of a community's long term needs), is nonetheless democratically accountable through the local councils to US, the people it is there to serve and who pay for it through our local taxes. If you don't support applications in your area, you have a right to make representations and to have them heard.

That's why I am:
 

• writing to all the Parish Councils of the villages affected by the latest wave of planning applications to suggest a Village Neighbourhood Meeting at which I and the local councillors should come and give local people a chance to express their views.


• writing to all local residents affected to encourage them to have their say and pledge to make sure their views are heard properly.

It is our area. It is our rural heritage, and it is our planning system.

So have your say.

Please email me at george@georgefreeman.co.uk and let me know what you think about planning policy and any local planning issue you may have.