After the
election, the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE)
will launch a campaign to de-bunk the myths it claims have grown up
around housing. This was revealed on 25 March by Shaun Spiers, chief
executive of the CPRE at a public meeting at Cardinal Newman School
Luton.
The myths, say
CPRE, is that we need lots of houses yet for over 20 years the UK has
been building homes at a greater rate than our population growth.
CPRE insist this effect has not been perceived because of such things
as the rise in second home ownership (not so much an issue around
here as in the Cotswolds and south-west England, I expect).
CPRE is accused by
some as “not taking an holistic view”. Councils have a duty to
co-operate with London on providing housing needs: it stretches to
neighbouring councils of those neighbouring London, so Bedfordshire
is affected. If you Google the 'Bedford 51' letter, you'll see it
sets a backdrop for the working relationship between Boris's GLA and
other councils on housing.
It shouldn't stop
us scrutinising what CBC is doing, or fighting hard to keep our green
spaces and Green Belt gems, but I hope this wider understanding will
help us achieve a balanced tone. At the meeting,
someone remarked how brownfield development has made London a better
place to live and work in, so concluded “this can happen in
Bedfordshire too”. But can it? How much previously built on land
in need of re-development is owned by the public sector and how much
by the private sector? And is the cost in time and money of
compulsory purchase prohibitive? Is there a will to find the way to
do it?
Or will the eight
national house-building companies continue to insist on controlled
release of new homes for sale, to ensure prices remain buoyant, so
undermining the public sector's ambitions?
I urged CPRE to
relaunch their inter-active website tool from 2014 whereby people
could send in photos and descriptions of places near where they lived
that were abandoned and ripe for re-development. These varied in size
from small plots in Hitchin and Shefford to multi-acre sites within
Vauxhall's complex in Luton. Of course, ideally local councils would
do this as part of their work to engage with their residents, but
there were no Tory members of CBC to hear that or indeed any other
suggestion.
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