Country park plans which Love Actually star Dame Emma Thompson said were “sheer madness” have been green-lit by Stevenage Borough Council.

The Oscar winner previously spoke out against plans for a toilet block and car park in the Forster Country, an area named after novelist E. M. Forster who set part of his novel Howards End in the “swelling forms of the Six Hills” in Hertfordshire.

Designs for the proposed country park accompany plans for up to 800 new homes.

Borough council planners have already granted outline planning permission for the scheme – which means it has already been accepted “in principle” – in a decision dated September 1, 2022.

The authority’s planning committee reviewed more detailed country park designs in March when councillors sent them back to the drawing board because they felt the toilet block should be more “imaginative” and the car park with 50 spaces in total is too big.

Developers put updated designs to councillors at a meeting on Wednesday, November 29.

Jo Unsworth of Savills, speaking on behalf of the applicant, said: “The vision for the country park is to create a landscape like that which E. M. Forster would have experienced in the early 20th century.

“We propose species and planting mixes which Forster refers to in his writing, such as oak, wych elm, dog-rose, crab apple, hawthorn and hazel.

“We have also demonstrated how the landscape will be restored to biodiverse hay meadows as opposed to intensive arable farming, and replicated the original field patterns by reinstating hedgerows.

“The plans would result in an increase of biodiversity of 59 per cent by planting woodland, hedgerows and a community orchard.

“It is a fundamental principle of the country park that it will be free, open and accessible to all.”

Ms Unsworth said the new designs feature “downgraded” footpaths which would be narrower than the original plans.

The toilet block will contain three unisex toilet stalls with curved wall corners.

Previous designs featured right-angled corners and separate male and female facilities, and a unisex facility marked “disabled”.

According to Savills, Stevenage Borough Council officers asked designers to retain the 50-space car park “based on experience of maintaining other country parks in the borough”.

Part of the car park will be made using reinforced grass “to create a more informal appearance”.

Ms Unsworth described the proposals as a “once-in-a-generation chance to bring this site, which is currently private farmland, into beneficial public use, paid for by the developers”.

She said the plans would cost housebuilders more than £1.8million.

The Comet: Work has already begun at Forster CountryWork has already begun at Forster Country (Image: Newsquest)

Dame Emma previously said: “To destroy beautiful countryside in aid of a car park is bad enough but to destroy countryside with such a heritage and of such value to the economy in terms of tourism is sheer madness. It has to be rethought.”

At the November meeting in Stevenage, Friends of the Forster Country’s Chris Naylor told councillors: “We think you should expect better.”

“The only real thing that has changed is the date on the front page.”

Mr Naylor referred to Rook’s Nest House, which is adjacent to the development.

“It was to this house in the late 19th century that a young boy and his widowed mother, Lily Forster, moved,” he said.

“That boy loved these fields, their beauty, their wildlife, their connection to their past and to the future.

“Little wonder then that when E. M. Forster grew up, he made his home, these fields, this Stevenage the setting for one of the most famous [in the] canon of English literature in the 20th century.”

Mr Naylor pointed to developers’ plans to spread topsoil “in a subtle way with contours graded to blend with the existing slopes” across the country park and described it as “blatant cost saving at the expense of the land and the wildlife”.

He said developers had planned a “drag-and-drop, could-be-anywhere urban recreation park” with “no respect for this land”.

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Stevenage Borough Council officers told councillors the proposals are “considered to be acceptable” in planning terms, so they should grant developers permission for the scheme.

“The works, including the construction of foot and cycleways, a toilet block and car park, as well as the provision of various street furniture are considered to provide significant public benefit to the use of this land by the public as a country park,” they wrote.

Councillors voted to grant permission for the scheme.