ASHFORD RURAL TRUST

23 June 2003

Members of Ashford's Future Delivery Board
C/o Ashford Borough Council
Civic Centre, Tannery Lane
ASHFORD Kent TN23 1PL

Gentlemen
Interim Delivery Plan (2003 - 2006)

The Trust asked for and the Ashford Borough Council has now kindly provided a copy of the Board's Interim Delivery Plan submitted to Government. Whilst it is our understanding that the Plan was developed without public consultation, we believe that consistent with the Borough Council's policy in such matters, public consultation will be encouraged before the Plan is submitted to Government in final form in the Autumn and this we applaud.

It is gratifying that Government has seen fit to entrust the development of Ashford as a Growth Area initially to a Delivery Board such as has been created, and which in its Initial Delivery Plan seeks to justify a bid for some £69m of the total of £164m allocated for all South East England Growth Areas outside the Gateway.

In the Trust's view, the Plan makes impressive reading on first perusal. In particular, it is pleasing to note that the Board fully recognizes that to provide a relatively sustainable balance of homes and jobs, the rate of Ashford's "economic growth will need to triple". But we have to question whether the Board fully appreciates a major problem inherent in the achievement of such an ambitious economic growth rate in the centre of The Garden of England - the need to empower a resident labour force with skills required in order for new entrepreneurial businesses to locate here.

Despite the demise of the area's labour intensive railway works and coal mining, and with agriculture employing only some 3% of the Borough's labour force, Ashford today enjoys near full employment - but largely of the unskilled, short term, mobile, near minimum wage "check out/shelf stacking" type. Such workers can rarely aspire to home ownership. This situation derives in part from Ashford's post World War II experience of social engineering. The town is still living with the negative social outcome of this experience. The evidence for this is the Borough's low average education and ambition levels & poor attainment and earning achievement standards.

Quoting now from our own Memorandum to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's Select Committee on "Planning for sustainable housing & communities", we submitted in October last year that

"we most seriously doubt that immediate and near term job prospects in the Ashford area can be viewed as likely to require a growth in housing units, especially in the lower cost bracket, of the order of 1,000 plus per year.
A salient reason for this assertion is that unless and until standards of secondary and tertiary education and vocational training available locally improve dramatically, the area cannot expect to grow capital-intensive industry requiring skills and aptitudes not presently locally available in the quantity and of the quality that would be required. This leaves resort in the centre of the Garden of England to the most undesirable development of manufacturing-based, labour-intensive industry requiring only a relatively semi-skilled and low paid labour force."

We added that

"we caution against all endeavours to bring about, virtually by gerrymandering means, demographic change as illustrated by conditions of life in the community and that additionally would have the questionable advantage of justifying an unwarranted and unnecessary increase in the number of housing units for sale in Ashford."

We note that

• at page 4, the Delivery Plan recognises specifically that economic capacity building will require to involve "improving the skills base and training capacity of Ashford";
• at page 6, the Plan registers the need for a "significant boost to higher education offer(ed) in the town to address skills needs of growing economy and attract related business…..";
• at page 19, matching jobs with the workforce & with growth sectors requires "identifying the growth sector for Ashford and ensuring that the skills within the local workforce match those that are needed in the future".

The salient point we wish to emphasise here and with which we seek your concurrence is that requirements relating to improvement of Ashford's skills base are imperative prerequisites essential to ensure that the Board's planning for sustainable housing and communities is meaningful and justifies Government's trust in its competence.

The Trust looks forward to receiving the Board's considered responses to these points and, in due course, an invitation to discussions before its Plan is finalised for submission to Government. Meanwhile, this letter is copied for information to the Wye Office of the Council for the Protection of Rural England.

Yours faithfully

Neville Green
Chairman