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RICH HADLEY

Thinking around.

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Batting for Ledbury: Why I Voted No.

30/6/2014

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At Ledbury Town Council’s Planning Committee last week (Thursday 26 June), more than twenty members of the Cricket Club crowded into the Market House to deliver an impassioned plea that planning permission be granted for 100 houses to be built on the town's cricket pitch near The Full Pitcher.  The Club’s capable spokesman Matt Erhlich explained that, with this plan, the Cricket Club had the chance to relocate to a new site on the Ross Road which would provide fantastic new facilities for players and allow the club to grow and develop in future.

They were dismayed that the decision of the Committee went overwhelmingly against them.  I appreciate their disappointment and I want to explain why I could not support the planning application.  All I’d say is, keep calm guys. It’s not the end of the road for your relocation. There will be other opportunities.

Planning decisions have to be based on the material facts, the extent to which they conform to policy (see footnote). If they don’t, local authorities lay themselves open to expensive appeals, or even more expensive legal challenges in the courts – and create precedents which can have damaging effects on other communities in the county. Everything has to be done by the book, just like a trial at court. Planning policy isn’t designed to thwart aspirations and good ideas – it is to ensure that building is approached in a coherent manner, to correct standards and to maintain the quality of the environment and economy, for the benefit of the entire community.

Even so, in the minds of the general public, planning decisions are often judged on emotional grounds. And so it is in the with this proposal for 100 houses on Ledbury’s ancient cricket pitch. The decision whether to approve this or not was always going to be controversial. Here are the reasons why I voted against.

1. The planning application as presented is to build 100 houses on a designated and protected open green space, one of Ledbury’s few remaining.  It is noted that no community consultation has taken place among the town’s residents concerning the loss of this ‘green lung’.

2. The Cricket Club relocation to Ross Road, while desirable as a concept, is not presented as a ‘linked’ planning application. Without this, the Planning Committee could consider only the housing application put before them. 

3. No firm details – or guarantees - are provided concerning the alternative cricket pitch facilities in the future, simply the promise of a further planning application in due course. I am mindful that developers have a nasty habit of reneging on expensive commitments for community facilities, once they have achieved their main objective, which is to gain outline planning permission.

To these concrete objections, I would add several important further considerations. 

4. Ledbury Town Council is currently challenging Herefordshire’s Core Strategy for 800 houses to be built on land north of the railway viaduct.  The Town Council meanwhile is also engaged in a major community consultation exercise to establish where housing should be built in future. If the Town Council jumps the gun and approves this application now, it would be contradicting its own objections to the Core Strategy even as it submits them for inspection. It would also be signalling that it is not genuinely committed to those community consultations for the Neighbourhood Plan - which are now at such a critical stage.  

Allowing this scheme to go ahead would give a green light to other speculative developers interested in making a fast buck with housing development applications anywhere and everywhere around the town. The precedent could lead to a building free-for-all in Ledbury. It would have effectively negated the careful planning case that is being put forward at this very moment concerning the conservation of Ledbury’s character and quality of life.  I was not prepared to jeopardise that.

5. Regardless of the needs of the Cricket Club, the loss of the open green space, would be an irreplaceable loss to the well-being of the town for generations to come.  If housing is to be built in Ledbury it should in my view be on land which does not encroach on our open public spaces, of which we have so few. If the Cricket Club needs new facilities, then of course, they should be supported in that endeavour – and there are clearly other options for their growth and development depending on the eventual shape of the Core Strategy (which will emerge early in 2015).  If the town council were to signal its consent for this green space to be built upon for planning gain elsewhere – this precedent would be be used in argument for other areas of green space threatened by development – such as the Recreation Ground. Be careful what you wish for.

6. Ledbury’s Sports Federation – chaired by Town Mayor Cllr Bob Barnes, who is also the Chair of Ledbury’s Neighbourhood Plan – has campaigned for additional sports pitches to be provided in town. The aim has always been to secure more open recreational space in Ledbury, not simply replace land lost by infill housing development such as this. It is inexplicable therefore that he, alongside Cllr Allen Conway, spoke in support of this application.


Just last year when it emerged that developers were eyeing up the cricket pitch for housing, Cllr Barnes said: “Ledbury is very much short of green spaces. For a town of this size, we only have 25 per cent of what we require. This would be a disaster.” At that stage, he was of the opinion that the land would be protected from development for the next fifteen years by the Local Development Plan and the Neighbourhood Plan, once it had been agreed by the community. So what has changed in the last year?

Read the full story in the Ledbury Reporter (8.3.13) here.

7. If as seems likely, some housing is built beyond the viaduct in future, a key challenge will be to integrate this far-flung outpost of Ledbury with the rest of the community.  One of the elements of the long term plan under consideration, is to provide sports pitches within that new district. Perhaps therefore the Ross Road option might not be in the very best interests of Ledbury’s community as a whole, and a new pitch near to the new housing might be a better solution in terms of sustaining Ledbury’s sense of community.

Taking into account all these factors, I believe that the Cricket Club should bide its time until all the aspects of the planning equation have been considered. It won’t be long to wait before there is clarity, and a good decision for the long term interests of everyone can be achieved.

As a footnote, I must comment on the assertion by a town councillor at the meeting, that of the 100 houses, 35% of them will be devoted to social housing. He and his supporters argue passionately that such a deal would be huge benefit to people on lower incomes, who are forced to leave Ledbury because of high property prices, and the lack of available housing here. I entirely support that sentiment and want to see more social housing. 

It doesn’t however, take close examination of the planning application as presented and its supporting documents to see that there is no evidence to support this claim. The document states baldly: ‘the applicant agrees to provide a level of affordable housing in line with planning policy.’ There is no mention of social housing (ie rental or co-ownership properties managed by housing associations.) Unless and until I see those magic words ‘35% social housing’ written in the terms of the planning application, I will take any such verbal promises with a big pinch of salt. History tells us that they mean nothing.

Turning down this planning application is not end of the world for the Cricket Club and is in the best long term interests of Ledbury and its residents. Good things, for everyone in Ledbury, are not far off, that's if we play our cards calmly, patiently and intelligently.


Note:
Two years ago, Mr Eric Pickles the Communities Secretary, effectively tore up the planning rule book and instituted a presumption that planning permission for housing developments should be granted - unless there are compelling reasons to turn them down. The move was billed as a way of cutting down on local authority red tape and getting the economy – and house-building – on the move. From a massive 900,000 word policy framework, English planning policy was drastically pruned to an easy to digest, 60 page document.


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Here's to the 'Wrong Type of People'

11/6/2014

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PicturePhoto: http://www.anordinarymom.com/kids-crack-me-up-10/
In a recent Ledbury Council committee discussion about remuneration for town councillors, the consensus, sensibly enough, was that being paid an allowance would be a bad thing for many good reasons. 

The discussion turned to the question of whether it might be a positive move to pay expenses for childcare or similar care responsibilities. Is it fair, a few members asked, if parents with children should be financially impacted by having to fork out for baby-sitters while at town council meetings? There were nods of acknowledgement that perhaps a carer's allowance should be considered. So far so good.

As ever there was one loud voice who dared to utter the unutterable. ‘We shouldn’t pay any allowances to councillors’, he said. ‘We’ll attract the wrong type of people.’ Oh dear. He forgot to mention of course, that right now councillors are paid out-of-pocket allowances for their travel and meals, but presumably that doesn't count.

So there we have it. Maybe it's unfair to generalise, this was after all only one voice among a dozen. It does often seem though that the drift of old boys clubs like Ledbury Town Council is always to self-replicate, to do everything to fend off alternative voices, from alternative sections of society, never to encourage the wrong type of people into its ranks.

I say bring them in. A shot of new blood and fresh ideas would be a wonderful tonic to Ledbury’s body politic.

Note: many enlightened local councils, including Herefordshire Council,  now pay ‘dependent carers allowance’  to their elected members to support child- and other care costs. Over a four year council term these expenses could mount up significantly, and make a councillor position prohibitively expensive for people in less affluent circumstances, and this is clearly unfair. Let’s be straight. Being able to afford it should never be a consideration in deciding whether to run for council office whatever type of person you are, rich or poor, Wrong or Right.


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Everybody Welcome?

10/6/2014

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Who would want to be a local councillor?

According to a ‘national census of local authority councillors’ in 2010, local councillors are predominantly men (70%), older (60 years is the average age) and white (96%). And they love it.  67 per cent of councillors intend to stand for re-election at the end of their term in office and 83 per cent would recommend taking on the role to others.

Before jumping to conclusions, I want to applaud these people for their work. Anybody is better than nobody, surely.


So hats off to the retired fellas. These stalwarts of civic society have time on their hands and are committed to supporting their communities. They don’t get paid very much (and in the case of most town councils like Ledbury’s get nothing) and  apparently spend half the working week on council business. Without them, the country would probably grind to a full stop. So no personal disrespect is intended here. Don't get me wrong, their contribution is fully appreciated.


Not Representative
The trouble is that this small respectable fraction of society who are running things at local level is not remotely representative of the country as a whole. Where is the gender balance? Where are the young(er) people? The ethnic minorities and other minority groups? What we have is a monocultural group who make policy, organise services, chair meetings, and behave exactly as you would expect them to do. Councils are run like old boys clubs because they are old boys clubs.

Meanwhile, is it a surprise that democratic engagement is at an all time low? Turnouts in elections are tragically poor - that’s if an election takes place at all. Town councils like Ledbury’s routinely struggle to marshall enough candidates to fill the eighteen councillor vacancies, meaning seats are filled by uncontested election or by co-option. Few people can remember when there was last a full town council election. Democracy is not really working.

Exclusion
There are many hurdles to candidates standing for election, some practical, some cultural.

Time and money are major barriers if you are an ordinary working person, with a family to care for. There is the expense of paying baby-sitters or carers when out at meetings and  the cost of producing election publicity which can run to hundreds of pounds.  Disabled people also face an often impossible struggle to canvass effectively at election time.

There is also another even more deadly deterrent to which I can attest. The stuff of council meetings consists of hours upon hours of committees, hedged in by formal procedure and precedent. Apart from the odd moment of blokey banter, the result is bone dry, joyless discussions. Everything is done by the book. That’s code for small groups of allies having stitched up things beforehand.

Council business is a world away from the real world of ordinary people’s lives, or even the way people do ordinary business. The old boys have their ways of doing things and nobody’s going to get in the way.

Is it comfortable to be sitting with a peer group with whom you have nothing in common? I don’t think so.  When we bemoan the lack of younger, female, diverse councillor candidates and blame it on apathy, laziness or selfishness, we are wrong. These people are staying away in their droves because they feel like outsiders. 

They are outsiders.


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