This week Aylesbury MP David Lidington writes exclusively to Bucks Free Press readers:

With population growth and much-needed new housing in London and all the Chiltern counties, the challenge of balancing the different pressures on the “green lung” of our countryside gets greater.

People need access for recreation (few new homes these days have large gardens).

While rural areas need to be able to support new jobs and businesses, we also have to give proper priority to farming, conservation and the need for tranquillity.

The Chilterns Conservation Board keeps a beady eye on planning and transport issues and is a resolute defender of the Chilterns AONB. 

But they’ve also briefed me on good tourist ideas like Chilterns vineyard and brewery trails. 

I’ve suggested a political trail too! There’s Disraeli’s house at Hughenden, his father’s home in Bradenham, and connections with Hampden, Wilkes and Burke, not to mention Chequers.

Perhaps even Clement Attlee’s and Harold Wilson’s retirement homes in Prestwood and Missenden respectively might be added to the tour. (One of my favourite Attlee stories is of when, by then in the Lords, he excused himself early from a Lord Mayor’s banquet- white tie, medals, Garter and all- to catch the last Green Line bus back to Prestwood)!

The National Trust is one of the most important guardians of our countryside and I recently visited Hughenden Manor to discuss their latest plans for our area.

They told me that they were trying to think holistically about the land for which they have the responsibility of stewardship.

They are working out a long term strategy that strikes the right balance between different interests: access, biodiversity, sustainable and profitable farming.

They are also planning a new exhibition to highlight Hughenden’s wartime role and the secret work done at the Manor to analyse aerial photographs of occupied Europe.

It should be well worth a visit.