Political Viewpoint by Coun Carole Mulroney, Cabinet Member for Environment & Planning at Southend Council and Leigh Ward Councillor - Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
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THIS is probably the craziest, most frightening 6 months of all our lives, and brings with it huge social problems, for our health and wellbeing, disruption for our children and their futures, unemployment, business loss and economic meltdown. And also locally (and nationally), from a few, an explosion of anti-social behaviour, often linked to alcohol, unprecedented trashing of our environment and almost a demob happy attitude of being untouchable.
So why, when we still don’t know what the future holds, would this switchback Government choose now of all times to completely revamp the planning system? Costing Lord knows what.
There are lots of things that the people of Leigh show concern about, such as speeding traffic, parking, overdevelopment and the environment.
All valid issues, and I am part of a Joint Administration at Southend that understands that, and works to improve these situations for the future, with no constructive input from the Southend Tories, I might add, who stay silent in discussions and change their minds on everything that they can’t get kudos for.
And then along comes the Coronavirus and throws the world off track.
I know the planning system is not fit for purpose and have long said it should be overhauled and speeded up. But no Government has ever really grasped the nettles. Planning was a juggernaut too difficult to tackle and so they just tinkered with it and made it even more complicated and piled on more regulation to a creaking system.
So I feel a bit odd saying ‘is now really the right time?’ For the Government, of course it is, because everyone’s attention is elsewhere.
This Government’s planning reforms focus on housing and emphasise the need for speed, (sadly Boris is no Tom Cruise), but provides no detail of how that will work and still take on board the full impact of development on the environment, communities, facilities and infrastructure.
The proposals do accept that infrastructure is the key, and have some good ideas, but they are light on detail and long on rhetoric.
The Government’s national housing target is 300,000 new homes PA, but agreed sites nationwide only amount to 187,000. The consequence of their new targets will mean in Southend that even more new homes must be built each year, because we are way behind the targets already set.
In a Borough with little spare land it is obvious which way, probably, the majority of it will go. The only way is up, and the recent changes to allow additional storeys on flatted buildings is the evidence of that.
The Government needs to help places like us, because we are drowning in overdevelopment. Its just common sense (which Boris is always advocating), to ensure our communities are not ripped apart.
Numbers are one thing, but fulfilling the right need is a different issue. Our waiting list is long and could get longer because of the current situation. The Government’s proposed changes to help first time buyers are laudable, but could reduce significantly the amount of affordable housing that is delivered – there needs to be balance.
The Southend Tories missed a golden opportunity to provide more social housing with Government money, but they sat on it till it was nearly clawed back. The Joint Administration got in just in the nick of time to save it and has provided some much needed social housing, and will do more.
We have seen the level of fiddling with the system, allowing office blocks to change to residential without proper planning controls to ensure they are fit for habitation – not rabbit hutches, and not just to make up the numbers. This type of conversion takes little note of infrastructure needs and road systems – Councils are virtually powerless.
Our PM is one for the short sharp throwaway slogan and now wants us all to live in beautiful homes. But beauty is so subjective. What we need is well designed homes that meet the range of people’s needs, because beauty’s only skin deep.
In Southend we live in the real world, not the Boris (Cummings) fantasy land – people want and need affordable homes, so let’s plan better, and yes faster, and in the right places, but not in the middle of a global pandemic.
So Mr Johnson, give us the detail, if you’ve thought of it yet, and wait until the country is able to cope with it.
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