Hundreds of residents in East Chiltington, East Sussex, protested at the weekend against plans by Eton College to build a new town of 3,250 homes on green-belt land next to their village. More than 200 people turned out on Saturday as developer Welbeck Land held a public consultation event at Plumpton Racecourse, with locals branding the scheme "shameful" and warning it would destroy an ancient hamlet on the edge of the South Downs National Park.

The proposed development would be built on 450 acres of green-belt land modelled on the King's town of Poundbury in Dorset, and critics say it would expand the parish's population fifteen-fold, from around 400 to 6,000, while effectively merging with two neighbouring villages to form a settlement of more than 10,000 people. Eton, whose fees exceed £60,000 a year, bought the land speculatively despite it lying some 60 miles from the school, and a previous bid to develop the site was rejected in 2021. Residents cited threats to wildlife, traffic congestion and the loss of a community mentioned in the Domesday Book, while Welbeck's chief executive Alistair Watson defended the plans as a way to increase housing supply and ease local property prices during the eight-week consultation period.