Medway Greens call on Medway Council to “go back to the drawing board” with their Local Plan

Medway Green Party recently submitted a detailed response to Medway Council’s Local Plan consultation.  This was an article we sent to the press at the time…

Local Green campaigners have slammed the latest proposals in the Local Plan consultation describing the options as “serving the Council’s own laissez faire agenda”.

Bernard Hyde, Green Campaigner and local Architect says: “The rhetoric of the Medway Local Plan is worthy but the options presented are ill conceived and add to the problems we face instead of being part of the solution. We have to face up to the inevitable effects of climate change with all the many and varied impacts that it is going to have on all our lives. Our Council leaders, like Central Government, are avoiding the important issues, whether they be flooding, homelessness, failing harvests, lack of water or pollution, to serve their own laissez faire agenda”.

In particular, Medway Green Party has hit out at the proposal to build a new rural town on the Hoo Peninsula claiming that, not only is it unwelcome to local people, and damaging to the local environment, but that it stores up problems for the future because of the area’s clay soil.   Mr Hyde says:  “The developments will be built on clay which currently costs more to build on than chalk, will suffer more from the extremes of weather caused by climate change and may result in buildings that are uninsurable. Medway Council needs to go back to the drawing board on this”.

Clive Gregory, Medway Green and Hoo Peninsula resident adds: “There is little evidence that Medway residents were calling for development on the Hoo Peninsula.  In fact largely the opposite is stated in the Council’s own report on the last consultation.  It seems that the latest proposal is in the interests of developers and their short term profit rather than in the interests of the existing or future local population”.

Medway Green Party is however not without suggestions of how things can be done differently, and Mr Hyde delivered a hard copy of the Green Party response to the Local Plan Consultation to the Council Offices on Monday, together with a file of background information and references. He said: “The Local Plan consultation document is not particularly accessible to the average citizen due to the length of the consultation document and the mountain of material that accompanies it. We expect the planners to read the documents we have supplied”.

 

One year to go to Medway Council elections

While many people in the country are milling over the results of the 2018 Council elections, in Medway we were asked by local reporter, Dean Kilpatrick, to provide some thoughts on Medway Council’s elections next May.

Please see full article from Medway Green Party below:

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Medway Council is not renowned for its recognition of democracy and there appears to be little exception to this in regard to the Local Plan consultation.  The latest proposal to build a “rural town” on the Hoo Peninsula arguably favours the interests of developers over local people who want to preserve our green spaces and certainly don’t want a new town at Hoo.

This together with the continued identification of the SSSI at Lodge Hill and now Deangate Ridge Golf Course and other valuable green spaces such as Capstone Valley in housing proposals is I predict likely to be the biggest issue on the agenda as we approach the 2019 local elections.

Both the Conservatives and Labour administrations fully support massive development and fail to recognise and indeed simply don’t understand the importance of our environment locally. We are privileged to live in an area of international importance and need to preserve it. Only the Greens are questioning both the need for so many houses and the decisions the Council is making about where to put them.

The proposals are also completely inadequate in fulfilling local need for affordable housing.  Medway is regularly being advertised as a commuter town with pitches for buyers for new, undoubtedly expensive, riverside apartments in the pipeline. Is this the pipeline development mentioned in the Local Plan which the Council has already approved?  The current requirement of local people should be addressed first; this is social housing. There also needs to be more proactive effort to reduce climate change by ensuring that any building allows for maximum energy production and efficiency.

As with many legislative bodies from the EU commission down to the humblest local council, transparency is an issue. Medway is a good example of a few individuals thinking they know best and to implement their plans they involve others reluctantly.  Local people no longer accept this style of governance – its day is ending. What people are calling for is to be included in planning and decisions.  Proportional representation would be the best way to begin this change.

Meanwhile, both Tories and Labour seem to believe that the only answer to overpriced housing is to build more houses ignoring the need for more socially rentable housing locally and ignoring the role that financial markets have had in the massive escalation in prices of market housing.  Most people are completely unaware that the economic system is at the core of the majority of disastrous policy decisions. Some like Kate Raworth in her book “Doughnut Economics” [1] or the Positive Money group [2] challenge the status quo, but the problems with our economic system are largely left out of debate.  Greens will endeavour to highlight alternative economic solutions both at a local and global level.

The risk of increasing congestion and rising pollution from all the additional cars on our roads is also likely to be a factor.  We will need to be thinking of more sustainable travel solutions.  We also need more electric car charging points.  There seems to be no anticipation by the Council of the emergence of electric vehicles.

Concern regarding single use plastics is becoming more prominent following the excellent Blue Planet programme.  While the Council has agreed to stop using SUPs on Council premises more can be done. It surprises me that while the charge on plastic bags has helped reduce use, that plastic bags haven’t been eliminated altogether. Why don’t shops supply paper bags for groceries as they do in America?  The Council also needs to do better at reducing landfill. That Medway Norse has taken over the contract for running household waste recycling centres is something that needs watching.  They don’t seem to have done very well with Deangate Ridge Golf Course!

Finally the fight to protect our local public services including health, education and social care is likely to feature, all of which are suffering through Government cuts to the Council budget.

Who can predict any result in these unpredictable times but we believe that in May 2019 there will be even more need for Green voices on the Council.

Clive Gregory

Green Campaigner and PPC for Rochester and Strood

[1] https://www.kateraworth.com/

[2] http://positivemoney.org/

 

Council has wrong housing priorities says by-election candidate #RochesterWest

We know from the Local Plan consultation that three quarters of new housing development in Medway must be ‘affordable’ in order to meet the existing and future needs of the current local population.However, Medway Council’s recent review of contributions to be paid by housing developers (1) is to be based on their assumption that ‘the development of new housing increases the number of people living in an area and with that the demand for local services, such as schools and transport.’

Of course if houses that can only be afforded by people from outside Medway are built, then new people will be attracted to the area together with their need for additional infrastructure to support them.

These new people will contribute massively to the Council’s finances through rates, but it will still leave a correspondingly large number of Medway people without a home.

We do not intended to justify the failure of developers to contribute to the community, but to ensure that the appropriate type of housing is developed to meet local needs.

The Tory led Council is notorious for putting its finances before people.

On 8 March 2018 there will be an opportunity to put people before profit by voting for the Green Party in the Rochester West council election.

Sonia Hyner
Green candidate for Rochester West

 

(1) http://www.medway.gov.uk/planningandbuilding/applyforplanningpermission/developercontributions.aspx?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialSignIn

 

Candidate profile – Sonia Hyner #RochesterWest

Sonia Hyner has lived in Medway since 2002 and has been an active peace and climate change campaigner for some time.  She worked for Citizen Advice for 21 years, supporting members of the public to alleviate poverty and secure housing, before recently retraining to teach English to adults at Further Education College. Sonia also stood as the Green Candidate for the Rochester and Strood constituency in the 2017 General Election.

Sonia says: “One of the reasons I decided to enter politics was because of a lack of female voices in public life.  I felt that if I wanted women to have a voice, I needed to stand myself to contribute to that change.  The Conservatives currently dominate the Council and people feel that the Council doesn’t take their wishes and needs seriously. People deserve better!  Voting Green in Rochester West will help to provide more balance on Medway Council as well as encouraging and protecting values that currently have little or no voice such as….

 

Medway’s Environment and Sustainability:

A Green councillor would work to put environmental sustainability, health and wellbeing at the heart of council decisions and to protect our local countryside and green spaces from needless development. Globally many plants and animals have died out because their natural habitats have been destroyed. We must fight to protect our healthy green spaces, and clean up our toxic air, as well as for all development and transport to be truly sustainable. One of my key interests is in reducing litter and landfill and improving recycling locally.

Our NHS and Public Services:

Nationally our NHS is being sold off to private companies at an alarming rate. Our local services are at risk – this needs to stop! The recent Carillion disaster demonstrates a total failure in both Labour and Tory economic policy and their management of public services. I would do all I can to protect and improve our local public services.  People need to come before profit!

Homes that meet the needs of Medway:

We need to provide homes that local young people can actually afford.  The Medway Local Plan consultation estimates that 75% of new homes need to be affordable over the next 25 years to meet the needs of the local population, but the Council is only planning to enforce a requirement for 25% and is failing currently to achieve even that. There are alternatives such as Community Land Trusts which support local communities to build their own homes at prices they can afford and many would agree that we need the Council to start providing enough homes again. I would do all I can to ensure that all local people have a decent home.

If elected as councillor in Rochester West, I will make it my duty to strive towards making Medway the responsive, supportive and secure place I know it should be; respecting and listening to ALL voices in the community.”

Number of street homeless in Medway underestimated

Please see below a  recent response by Medway Green Party to an article which highlighted the numbers of homelessness in Medway but greatly underestimated the number of rough sleepers.

Since writing we have been informed that, thanks to the brilliant work of local homelessness charities such as One Big Family and Medway Help for Homeless (working with AMAT, Pathways and CRS)  many street homeless people have been found somewhere to live but the numbers are still too high, currently around 50 people in Medway.  In addition there are many people who have had to resort to “sofa-surfing” due to the lack of available accommodation.

We also understand that when the count was done by Medway Council they had been directly informed of the names of over 50 people who were sleeping rough and knew where they were sleeping, yet those people were not counted.  They only counted the people who they could see in shop doorways.

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A KentOnLine article which points to the “shocking” numbers of homeless people in Medway (highlighted by the charity Shelter), is likely to have greatly underestimated the true number of people in this dreadful predicament, particularly in regard to those forced to sleep rough.  When Medway Green Party was last updated by a local charity worker, those sleeping rough in Medway was in the hundreds and not 14 as stated in the article. It is all too easy for Medway Council to gloss over their responsibility when the numbers appear small. We believe the Council’s own figure (presumably the one supplied to Shelter) is based only on those people who one of the Council’s officials has counted sleeping in shop doorways and misses the majority of rough sleepers who prefer less public places.

As night time temperatures approach zero, we urge our Council to make adequate provision for the true number of people currently sleeping rough.  Nobody wants to witness a repeat of the tragedies we experienced in Medway last Christmas.

The homeless problem could be greatly helped if there were adequate social housing and affordable homes locally but the Council continues to do little proactively about this need. Proposed developments permitted in Medway, such as that at Rochester Riverside, continue to be woefully inadequate in this regard. The constant focus on high-end housing comes at the expense of those who really need a roof over their heads.

Sonia Hyner
Green Candidate for Rochester West Ward

Medway Council could be forced to increase its housing targets even further

According to KentOnLine (1), Kent Councils could be forced by the Government to accept thousands more new homes each year to make up affordable housing shortages.  This could mean Medway Council being pushed to find land for 1680 new builds a year in comparison to the Council’s current target of between 730 and 1410.

Steve Dyke, Medway Green Party coordinator, says:
“Our already stressed infrastructure in Medway will be stretched to breaking point by these proposed new targets for house building. The area already faces huge pressures from developers to build on its countryside and it now looks like our Council will have even less scope for rejecting any development, even if it is unsustainable or destructive to the local environment.

People need access to green space and clean air for their own mental and physical health and wellbeing. Our local MPs and Medway Council should stand up for all their constituents against the Government’s plans.”

Mary Smith, Medway Green Party officer says:
“If it was likely to vastly improve the proportion of truly affordable homes, it might not be too bad but we should question the whole premise that the South-East needs this many new homes.

“If the Government was really serious about providing affordable housing they would enable Councils to build social housing instead of sacrificing our green spaces to an additional expansion of overpriced private housing we don’t need. Our housing market is broken and no longer fit for purpose”.

Medway Green Party spokesperson, Clive Gregory adds:
“The Government’s targets for housing seem to have more to do with the Tory national policy of using house building as a means of kick starting the economy – a tactic that works briefly and then needs repeating – again… and again.

“We need to recognise this Government tactic and call it out for what it is.  Sadly we have a government that thinks future prosperity for the country is based on arms sales and house building and this has to be rejected by all decent people regardless of their political bias”.

ENDS

NOTES:

(1)    http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/kent-councils-could-be-forced-132203/