Kilburn, Denby & Holbrook Labour Party
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Last month we asked Labour Councillor Ben Bellamy along to our Kilburn & District branch meeting to give us some more details on how the Conservative council have been dealing with the Amber Valley Local plan.
I am certainly not against the creation of new appropriate dwellings, which we need more of, but the plan has definitely aggregated new developments in one half of the borough as demonstrated by the heatmap below which shows the number of houses proposed at each site, and amongst the sites chosen are 2 very contaminated land areas which may run into millions to remediate correctly.
Having familarised myself with the concept of the 'viability test' I now understand that this government test supports de
velopers profits first rather than creating housing to meet the needs of local residents, who may actually want a garden bigger than a stamp and not want mass traffic congestion due to inadequate infrastructure and access.
For the future we must work intelligently to find a better way as the current model only works for the volume house builders, giving poor standards of housing based purely upon the profit and not for health, wellbeing or sustainability - this needs to stop!
I am certainly not against the creation of new appropriate dwellings, which we need more of, but the plan has definitely aggregated new developments in one half of the borough as demonstrated by the heatmap below which shows the number of houses proposed at each site, and amongst the sites chosen are 2 very contaminated land areas which may run into millions to remediate correctly.
Having familarised myself with the concept of the 'viability test' I now understand that this government test supports de
velopers profits first rather than creating housing to meet the needs of local residents, who may actually want a garden bigger than a stamp and not want mass traffic congestion due to inadequate infrastructure and access.
For the future we must work intelligently to find a better way as the current model only works for the volume house builders, giving poor standards of housing based purely upon the profit and not for health, wellbeing or sustainability - this needs to stop!
Today was the launch of the Amber Valley Labour manifesto - we heard from the Labour group leaders of the Borough and County Council and the Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner as well as Shadow Housing Minister, John Heeley.
It was overall quite a gloomy picture with massive cuts coming from the Conservative County Council, these cuts are again set to hit the lowest earners and most vulnerable hardest. Cuts to disability learning services, early help provision for vulnerable children and their families, the removal of funding for unemployed workers centres and scraping the living wage, which will see the workforce which includes cleaners and mid-day supervisors affected. Set against this is the fact that the council tax precept is due to rise by 5% - LESS for MORE!!
For my part today I managed to get some time with the Shadow Housing Councillor and explained how in our ward we have major planning issues with completely inappropriate sites being included in the Local Plan including the removal of Greenbelt for development and an unbalanced provision across the Borough. It just pushes home the fact that we need greater transparency within Amber Valley planning and understand just how these decisions are being made and what is driving them!
The day re-affirmed for me why I am standing for the Council, even in these days where we will still be operating under a Conserative government, we need as much as possible to defend services where we can and expose bad decisions and governance.
It was overall quite a gloomy picture with massive cuts coming from the Conservative County Council, these cuts are again set to hit the lowest earners and most vulnerable hardest. Cuts to disability learning services, early help provision for vulnerable children and their families, the removal of funding for unemployed workers centres and scraping the living wage, which will see the workforce which includes cleaners and mid-day supervisors affected. Set against this is the fact that the council tax precept is due to rise by 5% - LESS for MORE!!
For my part today I managed to get some time with the Shadow Housing Councillor and explained how in our ward we have major planning issues with completely inappropriate sites being included in the Local Plan including the removal of Greenbelt for development and an unbalanced provision across the Borough. It just pushes home the fact that we need greater transparency within Amber Valley planning and understand just how these decisions are being made and what is driving them!
The day re-affirmed for me why I am standing for the Council, even in these days where we will still be operating under a Conserative government, we need as much as possible to defend services where we can and expose bad decisions and governance.