Nowhere is safe (From Evesham Journal)

Nowhere is safe

9:00am Thursday 7th March 2013 in Letters

APPALLED, as are many, by an obscene building frenzy trashing our Vale, I wrote to Eric Pickles, Communities Secretary.

Reply: “The National Planning Policy Framework does not set any national housing targets, or require local authorities to provide more houses than are needed. It simply asks councils to identify and plan to meet the objectively assessed needs of their communities.”

‘Simply’? If only.

Next January, more ‘pilgrims from the east’ (Romania and Bulgaria) will be coming to town.

More building to meet “community needs”? Yes.

Expanded services? No.

Tsunami waves of building applications from speculators already overwhelm our councils, encouraged by a clueless government which believes building is THE cure for our nation’s problems.

Our government’s localism is toxic.

Evesham’s ancient Abbey Fields recently fell victim to this ‘quackery’.

Following a cobbled-up, ‘job-lot’ development plan (SWDP), and despite a well-publicised local debate, and objections, Evesham’s district councillors (a councillor couple abstained) voted for hundreds of houses in the heart of town.

Speculators now want to build on the Isbourne gap.

It will join Hampton and Evesham and complete the final obliteration of Evesham’s south-west quadrant between the Cheltenham and Pershore Roads. Nowhere is safe from predatory opportunists seeking ‘shovel-ready’ sites.

Trust in government ‘localism’?

We’re getting horsemeat when the label said beef.

C MERRIMAN Evesham