Last ditch bid to save Middlewick from development emerges

Middlewick Ranges, which is owned by the Ministry of Defence, is expected to be sold for development next year when firing operations move to Fingringhoe.

If the MoD’s plans are successful, it will be kept in Colchester’s Local Plan and 1,000 houses built on the site which has been used as a firing range for more than 160 years.

But the Local Plan has yet to be signed off, and opponents are urging Colchester Council not to allow it to proceed unless all development at Middlewick is deleted.

And now notices have appeared surrounding the site off Abbot’s Road which opponents to the controversial scheme claim could prove helpful in their bid to save the land from development.

Read more: Fresh hope to save the Wick from 1,000 homes development

The notices are advising descendants of nine former owners of parts of Middlewick they have two months in which to make a claim to the Ministry of Defence.

Both Colchester Civic Society and Colchester High Steward Sir Bob Russell are now urging the former owners’ descendants to step forward.

Sir Bob, who has opposed the loss of Middlewick from when the Government announced in 2016 it would be selling the site, said: “Anything that can be done to prevent this planning and ecological disaster must be pursued.

“What appears to be the Ministry of Defence engaged in a box-ticking exercise must be seized by us in the spirit of where there’s life, there’s hope.”

The legal requirement for the Ministry of Defence to advertise the sale of land comes from a precedent known as the Critchel Down Rules which compels the Government to give descendants the right to buy land which was once owned by a deceased relative back from the state.

Former owners named in the public notice all have addresses in Mersea Road, Colchester, with others having a mention of Blackheath.

Sir Bob added: “I would be pleased to hear from any descendants. This may be a long shot, but anything and everything is worth trying.”