Instant town

...for 11,000 settlers, and seemingly as many quangos, on Devon greenbelt is heralded as an “eco-trail blazer” by East Devon District Council. Government seems content to wash its hands of our communities and plough promises and investment into new conurbations like Cranbrook instead.

 

Elsewhere, Okehampton's population is set to rise by at least one third due to West Devon Borough Council’s demands for a new-town extension. But the Dartmoor town of 6,000 was left unrepresented at the determining vote following the unexplained substitution of councillors. Little wonder that, in January 2011, the town issued a formal Petition of No Confidence in the wayward Council and its members.

 

COUNCIL TARGETS GROWTH 600% THE NATIONAL AVERAGE IN DEVON LAND RUSH

 

The 900 new houses for Okehampton and 1500 for neighbouring Tavistock represent growth consistent for towns with existing populations of up to 70,000 and will produce up to 50% growth over the term of the Strategy compared to natural growth of 7.5% nationally. Both town councils rejected the scheme as did 91% of voters at a Local Referendum.

 

Yet, WDBC’s urban vision of economic development demands housing beyond all community need and to create unprecedented population and demographic change to satisfy national fiscal objectives. Mass construction across miles of ‘unproductive’ greenbelt will achieve greater revenues for government as it is transferred to the developers and banks.

 

In 2004, The Campaign To Protect Rural England (CPRE) lauded the area as a model and voted Tavistock best market town in England www.cpre.org.uk/news/view/128. Something we have not since been allowed to forget while the planners have permitted new buildings which fail to incorporate local materials and styles, new out of town retail development, land taken from the rural economy and National Park for employment development and who seem unaware that the quality of the countryside surrounding market towns directly affects quality of life for those living here, as well as visitor attractiveness.

 

EXPERIENCED PLANNERS DETERMINED DEVON MUST NOT BE 'LEFT BEHIND'

 

The Council’s arbitrary, and improper, redesignation of the two Market Towns (def: a town of a few thousand at the heart of a wider rural community) as Main Towns (def: a major commuter centre of at least tens of thousands and comprising major transport interchanges) appears to have been an attempt to win from potential investors the infrastructure development necessary to support such rapidly swollen populations. Of course, it all depends on just how open you are to being defrauded…

 

Financing partner the Housing & Communities Agency is a predatory government quango armed with cash to bank roll the house building industry. With this money at stake West Devon’s farmland and open countryside, which despite comprising Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Outstanding Landscape Value, a UN World Heritage Site and bordering a National Park, ‘must’ now be bulldozed.

 

The other partner Kilbride, which is responsible for infrastructure and has been criticised for not having been subject to normal tendering processes, turns out to be Devon County Council in private sector clothing. In plain language, it’s taxpayers money: denied to our own community, as services are cut, but readily available for thousands of settlers - or perhaps for contracts and council jobs - in the creation of make-believe towns.

 

Let’s face it. The £25million already spent tweaking street furniture in the name of cycling tourism was never going to be enough. These are hardened megalomaniacs.

 

EXPEDIANT

 

Initially rejected by the Planning Inspector as unsound, the scheme was given the go-ahead in March 2011 after revisions. This involved the inspector’s removal of key infrastructure - such as education, health and transport provisions - requiring expensive government investment. He also gave extra land for retail development: which will detract from historic town centres. Presumably this wheeze both appeases public spending cuts and absolves the meddling councils for the disaster that is to be inflicted on our community and environment.

 

A LOAD OF OLD GOVERNMENT

 

Council managers’ and quango execs’ heady talk about “strategic partnerships” reveals enough about the motives underscoring the schemes www.youtube.com/user/TheUndart?feature=mhee#p/f/0/Gy2nJ6T.... Even “Growth Point”, which sounds like a formula for forecasting future population needs turns out to be another Initiative: a machine issuing edicts to feed the construction industry. But this was the preoccupation of the New Labour regime (1997-2010) whose housing quotas were savaged as “Soviet” by the country’s new administration.

 

Now, ignoring communities who’d voted for change, the Condems want to rebrand plans devised in 2006 to construct new towns across England, already the third most densely populated country on Earth, as their own.

 

Subsidised mortgages for new builds, announced in the government’s 2011 Budget, will keep the construction industry sat comfortably on their fat contracts and a steady flow of settlers incoming to build ever more houses to feed the phoney economy.

Done