15th August 2008: Eco-town? There's no such a word!
The 11th Edition of the Chambers Dictionary has just been published and a large number of new words and phrases have been included. For example "credit crunch", "postcode lottery", and even "wardrobe malfunction" (which means, for those of you not familiar with such terminology - "the temporary failure of an item of clothing to do its job in covering a part of the body that it would be advisable to keep covered".
However, what is more interesting is that also included is the word 'Eco-village'- defined as "a small-scale, environmentally friendly settlement designed for sustainable living" - but alas the word, 'eco-town' is not! Is that because eco-towns don't exist?!!! Do the publishers of Chambers know something we don't?
12th August 2008: "Flint's shoulder chip!"
Further news from the face to face meeting that Caroline Flint had with local people on 31st July - on a number of occasions she raised the subject of the North-South divide - "People up north from where I come from would give their right arm to have an infrastructure like you have down here".
And commenting on her visit to the actual site - it was a drive along the B430 through Weston on the Green - she said: "The houses all have big thick hedges so they wouldn't see the eco-town anyway".
But if you visit Flint's website and read her pledges to the Don Valley constituency that she represents (Doncaster), they include:
Very commendable - so why is she trying to destroy the infrastructure we already have down here - delicate as it may be in places - by imposing an eco-town that will bring chaos and misery to our road system? Why not encourage Cherwell to develop the brownfield site of the former RAF Upper Heyford?
Isn't it time Mrs Flint got rid of that chip on her shoulder and put some effort into closing the north-south divide she harps on about?
4th August 2008: "Airfield might be deciding factor"
No agreement has been met between the developers and the MOD who own Weston airfield. Parkridge have admitted that if they are not able to acquire the airfield then the development will not go ahead because it would not be viable. The RAF have indicated that they want the airfield site to be retained as it is the only one that can be used as a parachute dropping zone.
Interestingly, Weston was the first Oxfordshire airfield to be bombed in WW II. It was also the most bombed Oxfordshire airfield. We wonder how many unexploded bombs are lurking underneath the surface waiting to be dug up by unsuspecting builders!
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1st July, 2008: "Credit Crunch adds eco-features to list of victims?"
Suspicion is increasing that as funding costs increase and housing demand and prices drop like a stone, developers margins are being squeezed to the point where the eco-features of eco-towns have had to be dropped. Breakeven points on the projects may well have been pushed five years or more further out to beyond 2018, so that the initial phases of the towns will be of entirely conventional housing. The money for the expensive eco-features to support them such as district heating and water and waste recycling systems is no longer there. Ironically the credit crunch may also radically reduce the demand for affordable housing obviating the need for extra house build, whilst increased fuel costs throttle transport demand and emissions. Let's hope so.
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26th June,2008: "You can checkout any time you like, But you can never leave! " (final lines of Hotel California by The Eagles, © 1976, all rights reserved)
The developers suggest that the cost of a "peak hour departure" from their proposed utopia should be £200 per car. And you'd pay again to get back in. If you want to live in this vast, enclosed private province, overseen by the ominous and all powerful "Weston Otmoor Management Company", a new form of eco-authoritarian governance with a telescreen in every home, you're only option is commute to Oxford or Bicester by company tram. There will only be one exit by road. And that exit is even now, long before the first tollbooths are erected, blocked by fuming traffic, inching past. This will be a a gigantic and bizarre stockade of the housing waiting lists and dispossessed of the region, moored only by a tramline in the middle of the ancient Cherwell water meadows and semi-wetlands. Residents of the next door, sleepy, long-evolved Oxfordshire villages will stand and ponder the strange sounds and smells of an eco-fascist future, wafting over the vehicle traps, barbed wire, wilting green infrastructure and empty allotments of the adjacent eco-perdition.
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17th June, 2008: Eco-towns no longer have to be eco!
The Housing Minister Caroline Flint, in an astonishing and inexplicable U-turn, has said that eco-towns do not need to be built to Level 6 (zero carbon) standard of the Code for Sustainable Homes but only to Level 3 (25% more efficient than Building Regulations) because the £30,000 additional cost per dwelling can not be met by the developers. In 2006 the government ordered that all new dwellings must meet Level 6 by 2016. So eco- towns will no longer be eco and will thus fail their own exemplar criteria and vanish in a cloud of greenhouse gases.
A cost of £30,000 per dwelling is a very small price to pay to save the planet from catastrophe. I wonder what's more important to Ms. Flint?
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14th June 2008: Cheapo-towns, not
eco-towns
You'd have to be desperate to want to live in a shoe box in a
town where you have to pay to drive out and where the weekly
shop is brought home by twenty round trips on a bicycle. And
that's whom the government is targeting: desperate people. And
they're not going to like living in a high density ghetto
warmed by the combustion of the entire county's rubbish, where
they can't have a car and must grow their own food on an
allotment. They will be cheapo-towns, not eco-towns, and people
won't want to live there. They're ill-conceived, discriminatory
and will become crime-ridden, vandalised and graffitied
monuments to half-baked policy making by "morons in a hurry",
just like the vast, concrete wilderness, housing estates of the
60s. Help society's most needy: say NO to Weston Otmoor. Build
them homes where they already have lives, jobs and are part of
a real community.
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19th May 2008:
Professor David Lock, the government's eco-town expert, says
the Housing Minister plans to "crash the planning process".
Caroline Flint will bypass all the British, local and regional
policy processes, leaving only those legally enforced by
Brussels. This will get 7-10 years and have five towns built by
2016. In a fine example of Orwellian doublespeak, Ms. Flint is
on record as stating "I have made absolutely clear that all
eco-town bids will be subject to the proper local planning
process. I've also made clear that people will have numerous
opportunities to have their say and we have set out a clear
process for this."
It remains to be seen what this "clear process" is. At a meeting last month between the developers (Parkridge), Cherwell D.C. and Oxfordshire C.C. and Central Government, the last note of the minutes states: "The Weston proposal is of a scale and complexity that suggests the need to consider a special delivery arrangement such as a Development Corporation". These have special powers over and above the local planning laws and policies and if a DC was set up for Weston Otmoor, I suspect that Cherwell wouldn't get a look in!
Whitehall to force through eco-towns (Sunday Times, 18.05.08)
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Last week Gordon Brown announced £200 million to buy up
unsold new houses! But last week he told us we need to
concrete over the countryside because there was supposed to be
a shortage of affordable houses? Why on earth does he
want to use tax payers' money to rig the market by taking
unsold houses away for rental, thereby preventing them from
becoming affordable to buy?
Yes we all need to do more for the environment, but imposing
eco towns where they are not wanted is not the answer,
particularly at a time when the Prime Minister is personally
announcing a scheme to prevent the falling housing market that
first time buyers really need.
This is clear evidence that the alleged vast demand for new
housing is overstated. It is also electoral suicide.
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One of the arguments proposed for Weston Otmoor is that the
site is in an area of "extreme affordability
pressure". This may be true of Oxford, but it is
not true of Bicester, the nearest town to the site.
The web site zoopia.co.uk shows property values for the UK
and has a graph (on the page linked below) showing the
average price of property in OX26 (Bicester) compared to
the national average.
Contrary to the spin about extreme affordability pressure,
the average property value in OX26 is close to, but
below, the national average! This fact needs to be
shouted very loudly as the impression of need for the new
houses is based on the need in Central Oxford, not the
actual location of the proposed ecotown. OX27,
which includes the "posh" end of Bicester and Marsh
Gibbon is well above the national average, but Bicester
as a whole is definitely not an area of extreme
affordability pressure.
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We have heard precious little from the land-owners themselves which is hardly surprising I suppose. Would we want to speak to them anyway? For them the whole issue is to do with one of the seven deadly sins - greed! Greed for money. One close relative said that she was pleased for the family - it would mean that the children and grand-children would be financially secure for the rest of their lives! Well that's great for them but their selfish attitude affects the other 70,000 people who live in the surrounding area and who will be affected if this ridiculous "eco-town" proposal went ahead.