Agreed plan vital to end housing crisis
ANDREW North claims (Echo, August 30) that lack of strong political leadership is endangering the loss of valuable green fields to undesirable developments because a local plan is not yet in place.
He is right that the slow pace of progress with the Joint Core Strategy, which will eventually inform our local plan, is leading to the danger of "planning by appeal" which no sensible person would wish. But I think he is wrong to place the blame on our politicians.
In deciding where new developments should be planned for, there are two questions which need to be answered. The first question is: "How many houses will be needed?" Only after answering this first question can one sensibly answer the second question: "Where should they go?"
In the consultation on the draft JCS held last winter, the planning officers proposed building a very large number of new houses – in fact so many that to meet this proposal almost all the controversial sites would need to be developed. While they did agree to adopt this proposal "for consultation", our politicians did at the same time give a very clear and unanimous signal that they were not in agreement with the suggested numbers.
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Also, in response to the consultation, many respondents – including my own organisation, Leckhampton Green Land Action Group (Leglag) – gave strong arguments in favour of a very significant reduction in the proposed number of houses. Overall, this was the clearest message to emerge from the consultation, and of course the planners had to respond.
And what was the response? They brought in a planning partnership which has very strong ties to the development industry, to try to support their disputed estimate of numbers needed. Andrew North himself must have been part of the group that decided to do this, certainly without the agreement of the majority of our councillors.
As a result there will, it now appears, be yet another debate about what the requirement actually is, almost inevitably leading to further delay. Only if the planners and Andrew North are prepared to listen to arguments from the other side of the debate – environmental individuals and groups like our own – is an acceptable compromise likely to be reached.
I urge Andrew North to listen to our case and thus hasten what we all want – an agreed local plan in place as soon as possible.
Kit Braunholtz, Chairman of Leglag,
Leckhampton
Comments
by bettysenior
Sunday, September 02 2012, 8:32PM
“Cameron like Blair is ill-advised by Whitehall on Sustainable Economic Growth and the Way to achieve it
The high command of the conservatives has from the start thought that utopia was to be found through bulldozing through planning and building houses wherever a quick buck can be made. But history shows that this thinking by most probably a twenty-something Oxbridge brain, will fail and where this was not the case even in the good times of the 2000s when banks were lending as though there was no tomorrow. Indeed if we look back throughout history again, only in the two decades after WW2 did this country see a continuous sustainable economic growth through the building industry. But this realistically was also combined with the great spur from British industry who had in many ways the upper hand then with most nations including decimated Germany. Today we have no advantage and in fact have the economic might of China and the Far-East to contend with. This perceived government economic blueprint dreamt up by so-called whizz kids will therefore fail. What this nation needs is an economic strategy that creates new technological industries that forty of the world's scientists, engineers and technologists told Blair & co in 1997 after extensive consultation. Unfortunately Cameron it appears is just as deaf and as uninformed as Blair and where government still does not recognise our greatest asset, the British people's creative thinking that according to international studies is the best in the world. Therefore this stupid strategy to relax planning laws et al will get us nowhere except destroy our beautiful countryside and in another decade's time, we shall be deeper in the economic mire than we are today. The big question is, when will Whitehall start to listen to external wisdom such as that given to Blair fifteen years ago but totally ignored instead of leaving it to twenty-something non-performers in the sheer hope that something will happen. A hope that has failed miserably as history again has clearly shown. In the final analysis we need firm economic foundations to build on and where only the creation of new technological industries in the long-term can give us what we clearly seek. Not mere houses that will never provide any meaningful economic dynamism for a sustainable future Britain.
Dr David Hill
Chief Executive
World Innovation Foundation
United Kingdom & Switzerland”