Who are FDOG and what do we do?

FDOG (the Furtho Development Objection Group) are a small group of people who are passionate about protecting the rural surroundings of Cosgrove, Old Stratford, and other villages nearby.  We are supported and strengthened by an equally passionate wider group, who help us in many different ways such as delivering leaflets, making placards, manning stalls, etc.

So much has taken place that people joining the cause daily may not realise.  Read through the list to date and let us know if you have more suggestions.

Raising Awareness

• We designed and printed hundreds of flyers for 3 different areas highlighting the issues that would affect each neighbourhood if this development is permitted. With the help of our wider group, we delivered these to almost every household in Cosgrove, Old Stratford, Stony Stratford, Deanshanger, Wicken, Potterspury, Paulerspury, Yardley Gobion, Grafton Regis, Alderton, Castlethorpe, Hanslope, Haversham, Wolverton Mill, Galley Hill, Beachampton, and Thornton. 

• We operated stalls at Stony Stratford's Folk on the Green, Cosgrove's canal festival, and had leaflets and posters at Castlethorpe's open gardens.

• We put up an enormous banner at the Old Stratford roundabout - until WNC made us take it down.

• We put large banners at The Swan public house in Old Stratford, outside a private home on the Stratford Road, and the huge one reappeared on the side of a narrowboat at Cosgrove for the canal festival weekend as well as others on Solomon's Bridge, and over the horse tunnel.

• We supply posters to everyone who asks, and these are displayed on telegraph poles, fences, noticeboards, and in windows in all the nearest villages.

• We have been interviewed by Stony Radio,  Anglia News, Financial Times, BBC News, BBC Radio Northampton and BBC 3 Counties Radio. We have appeared several times in the local press.

• We write updates for The Old Mail parish magazine, and have presented at Cosgrove, Old Stratford, Deanshanger, Castlethorpe & Wicken parish meetings.  We also presented at the Annual Meeting of the Parish in Cosgrove in May 2023.

• We're very active on Facebook, X (Twitter), and Instagram - and are members of a number of local groups online too.

Encouraging Objections

• We created this website with links to the council's planning portal and we summarised every viable objection that you can make.

• We are running an intensive social media campaign, which is reaching thousands of people every week, and encouraging more people to formally object.  At the time of writing, we are at more than 2300 objections from the general public.

• We have written a template letter for you to send to your MP and councillors, and also provided all their names and contact details.
  
  

Correspondence with authorities

• We wrote to Michael Gove in June and are waiting for him to reply.

• We wrote to every member of West Northamptonshire's Strategic Planning Committee.

• We sent a copy of the FT article to ward councillors for Deanshanger, Newport & Hanslope, Stony Stratford, Wolverton and CMK, and then followed up with an objection letter and the three consultant reports a week later. We also emailed them on 27th July to tell them about Framptons' exhibition.

• We sent the FT article and all three consultant reports to the local MPs Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire), Ben Everett (MK North - incl Wolverton), and Iain Stewart (MK South - incl Stony.)

• We sent the flooding report to Newport Pagnell council on 29th July, and sent the traffic report to Buckingham Town Council on 4th August.

• We wrote to Andrea Leadsom again at the end of July with questions about the Northampton Gateway pollution study and HGV restrictions on the A508. This letter was copied to Deanshanger ward councillors Ian McCord and Ken Pritchard.

• In mid July, we sent the traffic assessment to both Local Highways & National Highways, the biodiversity report to WNC Ecology department, and the hydrology report to the Environment Agency.

• We have written to Historic England and West Northants' Conservation Officer about omissions in the historical sites assessments.

• We have also written to:
• RSPB
• Campaign to Protect Rural England CPRE
• Amphibian and Reptile Conservation ARC
• Open Spaces Society OSS
• The Scouting Association

Fundraising

• We have raised just under £4500 through a crowdfunding campaign and a 'beer n bingo' night at The Greyhound in Hanslope.  We also received around £2000 in other donations. We were able to contribute £2000 towards Cosgrove Parish Council's review of the flooding risk.  With the rest of the money we were able to commission expert reviews of the developer's environmental, traffic, and hydrology assessments.

• At the end of June 2023 we wrote to the Parish Councils of Hanslope, Wolverton & Greenleys, Stony Stratford, Old Stratford, Deanshanger, Potterspury, Yardley Gobion, Wicken, and Grafton Regis to ask them to join Cosgrove PC and support the campaign financially.

Research

• We have consulted experts in traffic modelling, hydrology, environment, planning (strategic and legal) and pollution.  We've also met or talked to other protest groups such as STAUNCH, Castlethorpe, Save St Albans - Fight The Freight, Protect Diseworth, Northampton Gateway, Save Our Spen, Hampden Fields Action Group, Save North St Albans Green Belt, and Save Our Fields.

• We attended WNC's Strategic Planning Committee meeting in July to understand how it operates.

• We have read every document on the WNC planning portal, plus many of the 2300+ neighbourhood objections. We have read WNC's Local Plan 1 and Local Plan 2, lots of planning legislation, countless articles and research into the logistics industry.  We've used this information to update you on this site and on social media with reasons to object to the development.

• We've researched the background of Frontier and Framptons and read through many of their previous developments.

• We found the archived planning refusal for a garden centre on this land and used those reasons to question WNC about this development.

• We're still looking for documentation about what exactly was buried on the site after the Deanox works closed in the early 1990s.

Anything else?

• We prepared a list of hard hitting questions for Framptons' Q&A session on 1st August, and arranged the protest outside the exhibition on 31st July.

• We've transcribed the whole exhibition and Q&A session. You can read it here.

And we're not finished yet!