Eco town plans have been heavily criticised
Friday, 04 April 2008
Eco towns, consisting of between 5,00 and 20,000 homes, will all be zero carbon emission, and are only to be built on reclaimed or Brownfield sites. Of the shortlist of 15, 10 will be built, with the first five being completed by 2016.
Protests have already occured against the proposal to build 6,000 homes at The Middle Quinton site, which is on a former Royal Engineers depot, south west of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Izzi Seccombe, a Warwickshire county councillor, said: 'Building 6,000 new homes at Long Marston [pictured] is utterly inappropriate. It would put unsustainable pressure on Stratford’s transport infrastructure and local services.'
Caroline Flint, Housing Minister, said: 'We have a major shortfall of housing and with so many buyers struggling to find suitable homes, more affordable housing is a huge priority.
'To face up to the threat of climate change, we must also cut the carbon emissions from our housing. Eco-towns will help solve both of these challenges.'
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The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said it was 'disappointed' with the shortlist - with one or two exceptions.
Kate Gordon, CPRE planning officer, said: 'There are a number of locations that involve the loss of greenfield land and a loss of agricultural land.'
Tim Henman's father, Anthony, has protested against the 'horrendous' potential eco town at Weston Otmoor in Oxfordshire, which would consist of 15,000 homes.
The Town and Country Planning Association, however, welcomed the eco town proposals.
Gideon Amos, its chief executive, said: 'With a potential to deliver around 200,000 new homes, eco towns are an essential part of the solution to the problem of delivering affordable homes at the highest environmental standards to families and households crying out for decent homes.'
Eco town plans have, however, been heavily criticised after the Government revealed the 15 sites on the shortlist yesterday.
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Rger Calver
April 28 10:53
I suggest that Mr Brown did this so that he had something to announce. Mr Brown does not care about our countryside. He is Scottish! He has been lobbied for 10yrs about this anomaly. Why has he never done anything about this? I suggest he does not feel the pain. You only feel pain when something is dear to you. I'm assuming of course that the building industry is not donating large amounts to the Labour party. I also suggest that if I were to announce (assuming I had some authority and money) that I wanted to build 4 million homes over the highlands he would act.
There are approx. 900,000 homes lying empty in the UK. Most big cities now have 10s of thousands of new builds that cannot be sold. They were ordered by Prescott, and endorsed by Brown. So much for central planning.. These properties are either not wanted, or the jobs to support them are not here.
The big mismatch is that we do not have jobs where the people and houses are. The government has found it very difficult to encourage businesses to relocate. Clearly, if new towns are to be as eco friendly as the Government states, then most people will need to find employment within them. If the government is now saying that it has found a new magic wand to encourage business to move, then it should demonstrate its power and create more high class vacancies where vast sections of the unemployed voters live and thus ease the pressure on the Southeast. If its wand does not work, new towns will be another labour disaster, which unlike the dome will be with us for a or more Century.
Perhaps we should also spend a little time considering who we expected to build these new towns. The fact that we that we have the Olympics in 2012 and the regeneration of large parts of London seems to have escaped the governments notice. Presumably, we would have to encourage more emigrant labour to build the home which would in turn require more home to be built for the next wave of emigrants and so on. As an ex-labour voter I can remember in 1997 being promised joined up government. I can honestly say that all we have had is joined up farce.
Roger Calver
Peter S.Lewis
April 19 16:19
The eco-town proposal for Middle Quinton has aroused strong feelings, generally being of the negative variety. The main objection appears to be the lack of transport infrastructure, and the resultant congestion in Stratford-upon-Avon.
However, Stratford-upon-Avon is not the centre of the universe!
Perhaps prospective residents in the eco-town may work or wish to travel in the opposite direction...towards Broadway, Cheltenham, Gloucester?
And , should the eco-town plan be approved, a condition of the developmwent could be that all building materials etc be shipped in on the existing rail link, therby causing no disruption to the local road infrastructure..
Furthermore, the Greenway route on the old railway trackbed, could carry a tram line, which, with frequent services to Stratford, would certainly alleviate
the congestion issue, and satisfy the needs and concerns of all.
It will be interesting to see the outcome to the proposals in the near future.