Peasants Democracy and Developers

An interesting week in the counter intuitive world of planning, localism and democracy.

I had the pleasure of going to a public ‘consultation’ on a proposal to plant 3,500 little boxes on a piece of green belt land. I am not opposed to new housing; I am opposed to development on green land. We have nearly run out of green land and it’s time to ponder when it should slow down or stop all together.

The developers and planners want to locate these new soulless boxes, probably on roads called The Oaks, Willow Grove, street names that are more like epitaphs, on an area already prone to ground water saturation and by a by-pass already choked at rush hour that can’t wait to be burdened by another 7,000 vehicles. A bypass funded by retailers that was a design disaster from the outset where the roundabouts should be sponsored by insurance companies and personal accident claim sharks.

Am I alone in recognising this folly and crass stupidity, apparently not, as well over 100 residents filled a youth centre to bend the councillors ear.

As the hall filled with residents who care I overheard a gentleman complaining ‘…we’ll all get frustrated, start shouting and let them off the hook’. A sad resignation that peoples frustrations were becoming fatigued already.

The councillor arrived, Dickensian in appearance, not an ounce of warmth in his gait and manner, Master of the House. He settled in to his seat ten minutes late, messing with his mobile phone two minutes in to the meeting, ill-fitting suit and an expression of disdain from his raised position above the uneducated peasants who should know better.  First impressions counted enormously here.

During the opening moments of the meeting the councillor came up with a rather startling approach to the challenge of local democracy working against the presumption to develop. The councillor seemed to threaten the audience with a wheeze along the lines of;

1.       Although elected by residents he said there was no point fending off development because they would win on appeal in any case. Sadly defeatist and powerless.

2.        If the residents fought against the proposal all that would happen is that more ‘aggressive’ developers would come and develop and residents would end up with more development.

Essentially those who care about their standard of living, their environment, their sense of place and community are burned at the stake for being witches or not!

So let’s get this right, a democratic elected representative, supposedly representing residents’ wishes and rights has no power. Developers, private companies, have more democratic rights than people, do you think that is right?

The councillor then went on to say something similar to what Michael Gove MP has said (the MP believes it is our moral duty to accept more housing!) Apparently our children (bless their innocence and naïvety of developers) won’t thank us for not allowing further housing supply to desecrate their green spaces. The green spaces they probably play and value already. Unfortunately I know my children won’t thank me for wrecking the environment and for allowing our elected representatives to shrink in the face of ‘development’!

Moral duty!! Think about that…. It always worries me when politicians talk about moral duty. The unfortunate souls of Germany were asked by politicians to have a moral duty in 1933.

The other interesting aspect from the platform was that apparently there isn’t enough housing to provide for future demand. Is that so? Where has that opinion come from? Where is the data? Who made the data? I wonder.  Well it seems this particular council has a rolling figure of around 2500 redundant houses at any one time. This figure is not for a particularly urban council area. Imagine what the figure would be for urban councils, imagine how much unnecessary building that would negate if the councils took more responsibility for empty buildings. Perhaps they could compulsory purchase them, rent them and use the funds to pay for other council services.

Furthermore the number of redundant retail outlets and even offices that could be converted to housing is ever increasing.

This brings me to a final point. The UK needs to wake up to the fact that small town high street retailing is dying a drawn out death. Alternative uses of town centres needs to be creative, imaginative, community owned and forward looking. Building new large retail outlets in towns is not the answer for community life in towns, although it is a great idea for developers to build speculative retail outlets as, in case one should forget, developers own democracy not you or I. Are we going to allow this to continue?

In summary, question where has your democracy gone? Fight against the word NIMBY, it is used by those who want to steal your green spaces for greed and mythical ‘progress’. Those who fear losing their local environment and qualities of life, are labelled NIMBYs in an attempt to discredit their equally valid concerns and distort it as a selfish and narrow minded response which damages the alleged greater good of 'development'.