Wednesday, Aug 25, 2010
Councils vote in favour of squashing people into tiny shoeboxes
BBC News: Impact of scrapped housing scheme for Somerset
Labour's old "regional spatial strategy", was particularly controversial in the Somerset area. It looked at the region's growing population and predicted how many new homes would need to be built. But local councils in the area argued that they did not need to build so many homes. So they welcomed the decision by Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, to scrap the targets. He said planning decisions should be made at a local level and handed the responsibility back to local councillors - elected people who know their neighbourhoods. The charity Shelter is very concerned that there isn't currently enough affordable housing here in the south west, and think the situation can only get worse, unless people put pressure on their councils to build more homes.
2 Comments
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1. mark wadsworth said...
"elected people who know their neighbourhoods."
is yet more Home-Owner-Ist cant. What they mean is "Elected people who rely on the votes of NIMBYs to stay in power".
2. crash bandicoot said...
This is a joke. I grew up in Somerset and I keep in touch with the news back there every now and then. Years ago I saw that the local council in Ilminster were complaining about having to build so many new houses. Their justification was that it would encourage people to live in the town who were not "Ilminster people". This is about as parochial as it gets but the council's reply was even better. They said something along the lines of "If you tell us to go away we may not darken your door again" - and that's exsctly what happened! So the homeowners can now all continue selling their cottages to downsizing Londoners under the banner of local homes of local people.