The battle of Pinewood

Sharon Parsons points from her bedroom window to the oak trees in the field beyond. A kestrel hovers over wild grassland. The woodland on the ancient heath glows orange and red in the autumn sunlight. "Between us and the clump of trees we're going to have Venice, Amsterdam and San Francisco," she says, with a straight face - reports The Guardian.

It is a surreal prospect but the battle over Project Pinewood already has enough intrigue to make a Hollywood screenplay. The £200m proposal to radically expand the famous film studios in Buckinghamshire pits the affluent residents of the home counties against the glamour of Hollywood. Both sides say the stakes are far higher than a little local difficulty: residents claim the development threatens the integrity of green belt across Britain; the film studio intimates that the future of this vibrant part of the nation's creative industries hangs in the balance.

Since Pinewood Studios were built nearly 75 years ago in secluded Iver Heath, just west of London, this mix of sheds, underwater pools and enormous blue screens behind a quaint, half-timbered gatehouse has spawned hundreds of much-loved films, from David Lean's Oliver Twist to Batman and, most famously, the James Bond franchise. Hollywood routinely uses the studios and this year they have hosted the final two Harry Potters, a new version of Gulliver's Travels and dozens of other lavish productions.

But Pinewood's latest move is its boldest yet. On fields opposite its current site, it wants to build permanent streets of real houses replicating vistas in New York, Paris, Vienna, Chicago, Berlin and other historic European cities. In a quintessentially modest English meadow, wedged next to the M25, there would rise a canal evoking Venice from one perspective and Amsterdam from another, brownstone terraces from Brooklyn, a screen crafts academy and a vibrant live-work "creative hub" with 1,400 homes.

It is a bold, innovative idea. There is one problem: local people are convinced it is a cunning ruse to build houses on precious green belt land where development is forbidden by law unless there are "very special circumstances". Bill Lidgate is a county councillor and puts it bluntly: "I believe it is a scam. They are trying to con us. This is all about building 1,400 houses on green belt. We are dealing with people who earn a living from making make-believe look like reality."

Last week, at an extraordinary planning meeting, South Bucks district council erected a special marquee so more than 200 protesters could follow proceedings via an audio link outside its headquarters. Although they had previously passed all 11 planning applications by Pinewood in the last 11 years, this time councillors threw out Project Pinewood in an unanimous vote. And while Parsons and others were ecstatic, they know that the battle is only just beginning. Project Pinewood will not yet confirm it but sources say they are certain to appeal the judgment. Ultimately, the government would be called in to decide. This could become the first test of whether a Conservative administration would give priority to developing our threatened creative industries or protecting our precious green belt.

Inside Pinewood, there is a typical whirl of activity. Compare the Market is filming its latest advert featuring CGI meerkats while Clint Eastwood is shooting Hereafter, his new film set in the Asian tsunami of 2004. While Pinewood based its international reputation on James Bond, around a third of its business is TV work, including The Weakest Link and The IT Crowd.

Andrew Smith, Pinewood's group corporate affairs director, has the Bond theme as his mobile ringtone. Between pointing out the backdrops for famous scenes in From Russia with Love and Goldfinger, he explains the studio's vision. Project Pinewood's generic cityscapes could be dressed and redressed to provide different sets for big and small budget films, TV and ad and fashion campaigns. An EastEnders special set in Amsterdam could, for instance, be shot at a fraction of the expense – and carbon emissions – along the project's "Amsterdam" canal, complete with Dutch gables and authentic detailing. Behind the facades would be modern apartments, whose residents – many of whom would work in the studios – could come and go, even while filming was going on.

Pinewood, Smith explains, is already a kind of science park for the film and TV industry and with its sister studios Shepperton and Teddington, is the headquarters for 320 linked businesses, including draperies, model-makers and music libraries. Project Pinewood would enable it to expand into a "creative hub" with live/work studios and an academy of practical movie crafts such as wig-making and carpentry.

Smith is adamant that Project Pinewood is not a mere housing estate and certainly not a scam. High-profile backers include Ridley Scott (who says the development would keep Pinewood "at the forefront of film-making"), Andrew Lloyd Webber (who thinks it "will help to ensure that the UK remains an attractive place to make films at a time when it is facing increasing international competition") and David Puttnam. "These guys don't put their names to a Barratt Homes type development," says Smith. "It genuinely isn't just a housing development."

Local people compare their fight with the so far successful campaign waged by the residents of Sipson, the village threatened with demolition by the third runway at Heathrow. "Stop Project Pinewood" is certainly an extremely well-heeled uprising. Before the planning meeting, residents politely park their Audis in a farmer's field laid on so the local streets do not become congested and attendees meekly agree to bossy strictures not to clap any speeches. "This isn't nimbyism," says Parsons, whose street was once used to film scenes from Carry On Camping. "We are very worried about the loss of our green belt land. It belongs to everyone in Britain. When it's gone, it's gone. And once you make exceptions for one scheme it becomes harder to defend the green belt elsewhere. This is the frontline of green belt. As soon as you develop outside the M25 there is no limit to Greater London."

Residents have other fears about Project Pinewood. They point out that Pinewood has planning applications already approved and plenty of space within its existing boundaries where it could build Project Pinewood. They argue that Project Pinewood's 960 new jobs would not be for local people and are particularly worried about its impact on overstretched local infrastructure. The six-storey development would tower over the two-storey suburbs of Iver Heath. The roads around the site are still, in places, single-track country lanes.

Most of all, though, local people feel suspicious. "I've never heard of people living in a film set. It doesn't make sense," says Paul Philo from Iver Heath. "Pinewood are trying to pull the wool over our eyes by disguising this as something for the film industry when all it is is a housing development on green belt land," says Harry Jenkins, another local resident. Smith says these suspicions are groundless and there really is no alternative location: he points to one open area on the current site. "This was Lilliput in the summer. It's been Gotham City and the Paris Opera House," he says. Pinewood's open spaces are constantly in use and huge sets are assembled and reassembled by film-makers. Smith has no doubt film-makers will need Project Pinewood's "real" sets not only because of high-definition but because CGI is still expensive and some filmmakers will always prefer the "authenticity" of actual buildings.

Previous owners tried to build a rifle range and a golf course here but were turned down because it was green belt and Smith says Project Pinewood is reflecting on the planners' decision. "It is incumbent on us to prove the very special circumstances [to allow development there] and I believe we've got a robust case," he says. The patch of land being fought so fiercely over is unprepossessing, neglected fields, abutting the M25. Part of the site is an old dump. Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust said it had no objection to the development. As Smith points out: "You are talking about land next to the M25. It's not exactly the Lake District."

And yet, despite its proximity to the motorway, these fields are full of life as they gradually revert to ancient heathland. On a cool autumn day, a small copper butterfly zigzags across the heath. Birds sing and the sweet smell of fungi rises in the autumn stillness. In the small oak copse known as "the clump", a family of roe deer have taken up residence. Over the last 40 years, locals have come to treat this land as their common. "People walk their dogs, they come to watch the wildlife and children have made dens in the woods," says Parsons.

If the site's understated, very English beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the rules governing green belt are clear. Its essential characteristic is not its environmental value but its openness. Green belt was instituted to stop ribbon developments smudging towns into endless suburban sprawl and it can be overturned only in very special circumstances.

Is Project Pinewood special enough? Smith likens Pinewood's vision of a creative hub to contemporary centres such as Googleplex and Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas's headquarters in California, as well as historic "hubs" such as Bloomsbury. "The benefits of living in creative clusters are well documented," he says. And although the Pinewood Studios group experienced a 55% drop in profits in the first half of this year (due to the recession and the dispute between US studios and the Screen Actors' Guild), creative industries are one of the few thriving economic sectors. "The government has an ambition to be the creative hub of Europe. This project goes a long way towards that."

"To build so many houses on green belt is every developer's dream," said one local councillor, Deirdre Holloway. "We have had a little bit of star dust sprinkled in our eyes. If you pull the curtain apart, behind these facades you have a housing estate."

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