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Our Campaign

Background

What is this Eco town business about?

Eco towns were proposed in Sept 2007 by Gordon Brown as one of his big ideas upon being elected as leader of the Labour party. The initial idea was to build five of these settlements, however this has since doubled to ten. These towns are intended to boost home building by 240,000 homes per year as part of the government's strategy of providing 3 million new homes by 2020.

Each Eco town is intended to have between 5,000 and 20,000 houses, with access to employment and to be supported by a range of new public amenities to make them self contained, reducing the need to travel by car and therefore “sustainable”. The government has proposed that private companies tender for the contracts to build these towns. Successful bidders would benefit from grants and financial support from the taxpayer.

The intention appears to be that each region will have one Eco town, ensuring that distribution is evenly spread throughout Britain . Initially there were approximately 57 bidders and, following an announcement on April 3 rd , this list was shortened to 15, which will be reduced to 10 following consultation over the summer.

Local residents and the public have right to input to this process, however, in our view, this is not being adequately publicised.

So what is wrong with the Eco towns programme?

Councils claim that the government's plans completely bypass the usual planning process and ride roughshod over locally agreed development plans. “.. While there may be a public consultation, the proposals fail to take notice of local development frameworks. As a result, sites that have been deemed unsuitable for development by those who know the area best have been included on the governments list of possible locations.

In some cases previously rejected development proposals have made it onto the shortlist after being re-packaged as Eco towns” .(Local Government Association) “Local people's democratic representatives are best placed to decide where new housing developments should be built and what facilities are needed in order for them to become pleasant places to live. Any central diktat will ride roughshod over the wishes of local people who elect councils to put them first”.

Sir Simon Milton, Chairman of the LGA said, “While we are in favour of tackling the housing crisis by building thousands of extra homes, imposing plans from Whitehall is not the right way to do it”.

“Eco Dream or Pipe Dream”?

A study of a real new settlement recently built in Cambridgeshire * suggests that environmental claims for Eco towns may be unrealistic: “The lack of local employment opportunities and the need to travel to work by car are the key issues in Camborne's failure to be ‘sustainable'”.

“People in Cambourne do seem to be very car dependent and the level of car ownership is high, relative to other places in the region”

“In today's highly mobile labour market, it may be unrealistic to plan for most people to work where they live, even if local jobs are available”.

How does this affect Lichfield and Fradley and the rest of the district?

A new settlement proposal for 5000 homes at Fradley / Curborough is now on the governments Eco town shortlist! Previous examples of new communities, including Runcorn, Telford and Milton Keynes , are much larger than this and there is speculation amongst professionals that 5000 houses may not be enough for a new settlement to be viable. This proposal may therefore either fail or need to be enlarged at a later date.

The experience at Cambourne supports this view, “There is immense pressure from developers for Cambourne to grow, possibly to double its present size. This growth pressure beyond the original numbers allocated in the planning permissions probably a feature of most new settlements.

Doubling the size would allow a secondary school to be built and would make other facilities like shops and services more viable”.

REMEMBER, the Eco towns are just a start to the government plan to build 3 million new homes by 2020!

The Curborough Consortium has decided to pre-empt the national programme Eco towns agenda on March 28 th by submitting a current application for a 5000 home settlement which DOES NOT meet the government's criteria and IS NOT FOR AN ECO TOWN AT ALL!!

Is this a “Done Deal”?

NO it isn't. The government has set a consultation period on the whole Eco towns agenda until 30th June 2008, before it takes the next steps, and says that it will listen.

It is now up to the people to tell the government (which is supposed to be working on our behalf), what we think of their ideas.

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