|
26 October 2002
Confidential until published
Ms Sarah Hartwell
Clerk, Select Committee, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
Housing, Planning, Local Government & the Regions
Committee Office, House of Commons, 7 Millbank
LONDON SW1P 3JA
Dear Ms Hartwell
Planning
for sustainable housing and communities
We believe that
your Committee is keen to receive submissions under this caption
from local residents groups such as the Ashford Rural Trust. Please
have your Committee consider the following Memorandum; it will be
noted that its content is confined to the inquiry's terms of reference
set out in Press Notice No 03/2002-03.
Purpose of the
Memorandum - To consider in particular whether the proposals contained
in the Deputy Prime Minister's 18 July 2002 statement on housing
and planning are desirable and whether and how they can be achieved.
Are the
proposals desirable?
An aim of this
Trust is to protect the rural approaches and the town of Ashford
from planning excesses. The Trust is not against the economic development
and enlargement of the town and supports the selection of Ashford
as a Growth Area, subject to the following conditions.
Conditions
| 1. |
Growth
in housing units must be restricted to a scale expressly related
to growth in local employment opportunities, so ruling out
speculative building and minimising the danger of Ashford
becoming merely a dormitory town.
|
| 2. |
If
1. above is achieved in a meaningful manner, demand will sustain
rather than reduce new house prices and serve to protect equity
values of recently constructed and purchased properties.
|
| 3. |
We
question the concentration of development on Ashford town to
the apparent exclusion of adjacent areas of deprivation including
Dover and Folkestone. Under circumstances highlighted at 4.
below, both areas could benefit economically, as could Ashford,
from operation of the CTRL to London and to Northern Europe.
|
| 4.
|
Significant
numbers of East Kent home owners and tenants resident in and
around Ashford presently commute to and from London in out-dated
rail travel conditions. The Strategic Rail Authority is yet
to determine if national and international fast track commuting
will be available on the CTRL using Eurostar or alternative
designated rolling stock. We submit that this aspect of prospects
for Ashford as a Growth Area deserves much more serious urgent
and imaginative consideration than is apparent at present.
|
| 5. |
Proposals
appear to assume that financing will be forthcoming to fund
resolution of prerequisite issues such as current infrastructural
shortcomings (in particular roads, but including power and water
supplies and drainage), social infrastructural needs, (schools,
hospitals, public transport) and flood plain constraints. Such
financing is not presently and cannot be made available by local
government. Nor, of course, is financing locally available to
fund the perceived urban renewal needs and the brownfield redevelopment
of Ashford town. See 6. below.
|
| 6. |
Whilst
until recently the Ashford Borough Council seemed content to
accept and plan for an Option 2 annual accretion of a maximum
of 700 housing units for the town (not the borough) over a defined
planning period, it would now appear that in order to secure
central government funding for associated development needs,
the Borough Council has had to agree to plan for an imposed
1,000 plus units per year over the same period. This feature
alone seems to make a nonsense of the massive and still on-going
public consultative exercise undertaken by the Borough Council
amongst its tax-paying citizens.
|
| 7. |
The 18
July proposals pronounce merely on the intention to enlarge
Ashford as a Growth Area in the South East, seeming to anticipate
the predictably negatively viewed social engineering aspects
of the public response but resolving to handle these aspects
once they have been measured. Ashford has previous, immediate
post-World War II experience of social engineering - in its
Stanhope neighbourhood - and is still living with the negative
social outcome evidenced by the low educational, aspirational,
employment and earning achievement standards resulting. In
no way do these proposals by themselves "promote high
quality sustainable communities whilst avoiding poorly designed
urban sprawl". Admirable though such intentions are in
themselves, they are mere words promoting ideals.
|
| 8.
|
We
have no views to state in this Memorandum on Millennium Villages.
|
| 9. |
The
Trust recognises and supports the need for a balance of social
housing if we understand correctly that by this is meant low-cost,
affordable starter homes, to be provided in urban areas and
in villages. Planning regulations as currently implemented have
resulted in a shortage in supply of such housing especially
in the borough's villages, in turn contributing to unit price
escalation in this sector. What we do not support is the provision
of social housing in this borough expressly intended for occupation
by low paid, principally social services workers, employed in
and having to commute to and from London.
|
| 10.
|
It
is the view of the Trust that decisions relating to housing
(including numbers, tenure and density) should be the sole responsibility
of local government; such decisions need to be taken in relation
to relevant prevailing local market forces; local government
must be more familiar with these than central government. Kent
County Council through its current Structure Plan and in accord
with Ashford Borough Council through its Local Plan have together
adequately managed such responsibility over recent years, especially
since the former "predict & provide" policy was
replaced by today's more enlightened policy of "plan, monitor
& manage". |
Whether
the proposals can be achieved.
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 of units in the lower cost brackets, of the order of
1,000 plus per year. A salient reason for this assertion is that
until and unless 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 a relatively
semi-skilled and low paid labour force.
We caution against
all endeavours to bring about, virtually by gerrymandering means,
demographic change as illustrated by conditions of life in the community
that additionally would have the questionable advantage of justifying
an unwanted and unnecessary increase in the number of housing units
for sale in Ashford.
How the
proposals can be achieved.
In the Trust's
opinion, the Deputy Prime Minister's aspiration for the expansion
of Ashford as a Growth Area is achievable subject to the two provisos
we outline below. These provisos would doubtless restrict achievement
to a limited but, we think, to a nevertheless acceptable extent,
effective and sustainable in character and with minimal further
damage to the environment and ecology of this area of East Kent.
Limited achievement
of the proposals is envisaged provided that
| • |
decision
taking reverts to local government in matters of planning, design,
implementation and essentially on numbers of new sustainable
housing and on community growth, |
| • |
financing
of major infrastructural, social needs and urban renewal projects
is supported incrementally by central government. |
Conclusion
Our views generally,
and the provisos set out in the paragraph above in particular, concern
Ashford only. However we guess that to a greater or lesser extent,
at least our provisos if not all our views are equally applicable
to the other designated Growth Areas of Milton Keynes, the Cambridge/Stansted
Corridor and the Thames Gateway
Yours sincerely
Neville Green
Chairman
Ashford Rural Trust
|
