If we believe the Conservatives’ campaigns about development on the Green Belt being unstoppable, what about Mad Bess?

This summer Conservative councillors showed us before-and-after pictures of housing estates on Green Belt in Charville, Ickenham Marshes and Northwood Hills. We’ve decided to believe every one. So here’s one of Mad Bess.

Object to the sale of four acres at Mad Bess using our form before 5pm on Thursday 22 October.

Their pictures

The three Conservative before-and-after pictures posted between 3rd August and 14th September show “attacks” by the Mayor of London on Charville ( “70% of Green Belt built on”, posted by Cllr Darran Davies), Ickenham Marshes (“Is this what Sadiq Khan wants for our Green Belt?” asked by Hillingdon Conservatives) and Joel Street Farm (“Save Joel Street Farm from Sadiq Khan” – a Conservative campaign poster).

None of these pictures came with a planning application (though Joel Street Farm did have a real screening request with the Council, later withdrawn).  Let’s believe the posters anyway – where would it take us, and what could it mean for Green Belt land at Mad Bess Cottage, should the council sell four acres of it?.

Their words

• Cllr Darran Davies (Charville, and Vice-Chair of the Planning Committee): “This plan is a direct threat to Hillingdon… These are not just empty fields… Once our Green Belt is gone, it’s gone forever.”
• Hillingdon Conservatives (Ickenham Marshes): “We are standing in the way of Mayor Khan to PREVENT development on our local green spaces.”
• Cllr Dr Anil Taneja under that post: “Hillingdon says NO to development on our Green Spaces.”
• Cllr John Riley, one of Ruislip’s three ward councillors, commenting on the campaign photo with Cllrs Corthorne, Tuckwell, Rathore and others: “Labours green belt butcher, Mayor LordSirSK!”
• The Joel Street Farm open letter, signed by Cllr Rathore (Northwood Hills) and Cllr Nick Denys (Eastcote, and the Cabinet Member responsible for property), among others: “We oppose any development on Joel Street Farm and will fight to protect it… Once Green Belt is built on, it is gone for good.” They promise to “use every available planning and legal avenue” to defend it.
• Council Leader Cllr Steve Tuckwell, at Full Council on 24 September: “We do not set the housing numbers imposed on us… once Hillingdon’s greenbelt is lost, it is lost forever.”

What the Council has put on the table at Mad Bess

In February the Council gave notice that it proposed to sell about 0.3 acres at Mad Bess Cottage: the cottage and its immediate plot. On 16 September came a new notice, for about 4 acres. That includes the drive and the land between the cottage and the road.

Plan of the September 4 acres for sale from Hillingdon Council

The stated reason, from Cllr Corthorne relaying Cllr Denys, is “to give the council the option to attach the field to the sale of Mad Bess Cottage to create a larger garden space.”

So who needs four acres of public open space and Green Belt for a garden? The Ruislip Woods Trust’s Mark Morgan asks whether the land is also in the buffer zone for the Ruislip Woods National Nature Reserve and SSSI. The full story is in our article on the sale and our article on the buffer zone.

Following their logic

If an estate can land on Charville, Ickenham Marshes and Joel Street Farm, it can land at Mad Bess. And Mad Bess has something those sites don’t: the Council is selling it.

Today the Council owns those four acres and isn’t building on them. Once they’re sold, someone else owns them. The Council says it has no plans to build at Mad Bess, but someone else could. Here is our version.

RRA “what if” illustration of imaginary development at Mad Bess Cottage and its four acres of land

Who decides?

On 29 July the Council’s own planning officer, Gavin Polkinghorn, told a public committee that exactly where new homes go is “that’s up for us to set”. We reported it on 1 August.  Cllr Riley Russell (not to be confused with Ruislip’s Cllr John Riley) was in the room. Eight days later he was calling the Mayor “clueless” under the Ickenham Marshes picture.

Cllr Riley Russell: “Has Sadiq Khan ever actually been to Hillingdon? Clueless Mayor who just doesn’t get it.”

So take your pick. If the Council decides, then it is the Council choosing to sell Mad Bess. If the Mayor decides, then the Council’s promises aren’t worth much.

Hillingdon Conservatives Ickenham Marshes campaign  Dream Team – posted to Facebook on 8th August

Who represents Ruislip?

All three Ruislip ward councillors are Conservatives.

• Cllr Philip Corthorne chairs the Planning Committee. He was in the Ickenham Marshes campaign photo, standing behind the Council Leader Steve Tuckwell and beside the Cabinet Member for Finance Eddie Lavery. 

• Cllr Peter Smallwood is active on Facebook and has supported the Northwood Hills campaign to save Joel Street Farm. He told us he couldn’t make our October public meeting, so we moved it to a date he could. He then didn’t come. He has not liaised with RRA recently and has not commented on the Mad Bess Cottage sale. 

• Cllr John Riley was in the Ickenham Marshes photo too. Replying under Cllr Rathore’s Joel Street post, he wrote that the Mayor “wants to destroy them by build build build and filling them with unsuitable folks!” We’d like to know who the “unsuitable folks” are. 

  

The answers we got

Cllr Denys put his name to “once Green Belt is built on, it is gone for good”. He says there are “no plans, or will on my part, to change the status of the land”. The one real safeguard would be a restrictive covenant on the sale. We asked whether there will be one, along with eleven other questions. Cllr Denys has answered none of the questions about the sale.

He wrote only that our questions “will be considered alongside all other responses once the consultation has closed”. That is after the 22 October deadline, so any answers would come too late to help an objection. The details are in our article on the twelve questions.

How to object

1. Use our form. Object by 5pm on Thursday 22 October. It sends your objection to the Council and to the Secretary of State’s Planning Casework Unit at the same time, and emails you a copy.
2. Or email estatesandvaluation@hillingdon.gov.uk, or write to the Development and Disposal Surveyor, Property & Estates, Civic Centre, High Street, Uxbridge UB8 1UW. Quote the notice and give your reasons. If you do, copy your email to the Planning Casework Unit too, at pcu@communities.gov.uk.
3. Ask your three ward councillors whether they support selling 4 acres of Green Belt. If you live in Ruislip ward, tick the box on the form to copy them in.

Start from the beginning of the Mad Bess Cottage series:

Hillingdon Council’s Mad Bess Cottage sale grows from 0.3 to 4 acres of Green Belt, for “a larger garden space”

Sources: Hillingdon Conservatives open letter; Cllr Davies on Facebook 3rd August and Hillingdon Conservatives on Facebook 6th August; Full Council webcast, 24 September; Gazette notices of 4 February and 16 September 2026.