'Have you seen.......'
'More houses....'
'It's too crowded.....'
'Oh no, that's really near me.....'
There's a lot of talk in our town at the moment. A building company have hired the Community Centre to show the town their plans for building on a farmer's field. Two hundred and seventy five, high quality low carbon homes. They know people won't like it. They also know that if they are clever that doesn't matter.
The government has set a target of new home building, which our area, contrary to how it feels, is falling short of. https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/maldon-planners-must-find-space-6504056 The council is currently reviewing it's public responses to the consultation that I guess very few people completed before announcing it's new Local Development Plan.
The council would rather grant large developments, asking developers to build, roads or schools as the price for their profit. They believe that it gives them an element of control, in that they can then turn down applications for development that they do not agree with.
So far, I can't quite commit to what I think, so I'm doing a Boris. This could be my Brexit article and I could end up deciding that something that is plainly bonkers is right.
Reasons for being pro development on this site
1. I'm old. I'm fatigued. The fight has gone out of me. Can I be bothered to argue about something that is going to happen anyway?
2. It's a field next to a busy road. Think of the bunnies that won't get run over. (Don't picture Watership Down)
3. People have to live somewhere. Why not our lovely town?
4. I bought a house on a 'new estate' (29 years ago) and it made me so happy I'm still here, contributing to the town. Not every new thing is bad.
5. I don't want to be one of those moany old people who complains about everything.
6. I hardly ever drive so the extra traffic doesn't affect me too much.
7. Biodiversity: Melissa Harrison, in Stubborn Light of Things said that you get greater biodiversity if a field is turned into houses. Individual gardens, where people are taking more responsibility for nature, such as feeding birds, planting a variety of flowers, leaving mess for wildlife creates more habitats than a sprayed farmers field. I think about that often and although it feels wrong it absolutely makes sense.
8. The alternative: A new town (or garden village, as they are calling it these days because of Basildon and Stevenage) takes away from the original town, rather than adding to it and when the people who brought into the idea of living it in grow up it ends up a wasteland of architecture that is no longer fashionable.
9. More people living here means more money in the town. More coffee shops. Less chance of the library being closed.
10. Large developments usually come with a promise to build some starter homes meaning that our young people may not have to move away.
Reasons for being against a development on this site.
1. The town is currently expanding enormously. There are over 1000 new homes being built on each side of the town. Maybe it's too soon?
2. Those 2000+ homes haven't been sold yet. There is no guarantee that there is the demand.
3. There are infrastructure problems with the town that have yet to be resolved for the extra houses currently being built. Our doctor's surgeries are on their knees and barely coping as it is. Our senior school will be the largest in the country and as such can't recruit a headteacher..
4. Although I don't drive much I can see that the roads are much busier than they were. It often takes 20 minutes to get out of the end of our road now.
5. They never plan roads properly.
6. Everything is such a mess while building work happens.
7. I love this field as it's quiet walk to the cemetery, or it was until this company compelled the whole town to walk there just to see what they were against.
8. The field contains my favourite tree. (Someone else seems to have named it Clive, which I don't object to)
9. The company are claiming they are going to build 'low carbon homes'. Who will check these credentials and hold them to account? Will they build them with solar panels, heat exchange pumps, water filtration systems? No. Because the government haven't told them they have to, so they will do as little as they can to pretend they are helping the environment. Plant a tree in Norway, refill a plastic soap bottle or take fewer flights to places they weren't going anyway. Yes, I am cynical.
10. The company are called LSL partners. (London Strategic Land) and they are an investment company whose website says that their mission is to create better housing for Greater London by investing in largely brownfield properties. Our town isn't in Greater London, doesn't even have a train station and the field is green because the wheat is not yet ready to harvest. (Yes, I do know what brownfield means, it was a joke because this isn’t it.)
11. As an investment company they won't be doing the building anyway and will farm the project off to whoever will offer the most money, therefore needing to keep their costs down and abandoning all promises of low carbon housing.
12. Their website shows huge tower blocks clad in green, Grenfell type, fire inducing plastic.
13. This site was on the original list when the last Council LDP was produced. It was rejected because access was difficult/inappropriate. Access is still difficult.
14. The field runs next to the cemetery and particularly the woodland burial part. Somehow this feels inappropriate, although the last time I checked the dead don't have an opinion on houses.
15. It seems morally repugnant to offer a farmer more money than they can make in their lifetime on a field of wheat at a time when climate change, Brexit and wars in the breadbasket of the world are suggesting that we should be securing our own food security.
So, I have more on the JUST SAY NO list. I think this development suggestion is a case of greed over need.
I have no objection to the building of housing if it is needed but I have no desire to reward rich people who are looking to make a quick profit.
The public consultation is open to anyone and although my first point about being and old, tired woman with little fight left still stands it might be worth asking some polite questions.
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