Greens Provide New Homes Above Shops

In several towns across the UK, including Worcester, the Green Party is leading the way to providing new homes without concreting over the countryside. Worcester Green Party has championed a scheme to get the space above shops into use for housing and they are getting cross-party support. Communities Minister Marcus Jones has voiced his support for the city's 'Living Above Shops' (LOTS) campaign, saying that it could inject more life into retail areas.
The LOTS campaign was launched by Louis Stephen, the chairperson of Worcester Green Party. The push to turn them into flats has also won the support of Worcester Conservative MP Robin Walker.
The council does not need to buy the space, it simply does deals with shop owners who receive part of the rent.

The Green Party is fully prepared to put aside party differences to get schemes like this up and running. Unfortunately in Colchester very little has been done to get the space above shops into use. The borough council created 9 "apartments" by selling off Angel Court and some more from the former Telephone House but that's about it. And "luxury apartments" are not the most pressing housing requirement.

The Brook Street Closure

One of the great myths about the Green Party is that we want to ban all cars. I'm still hearing it occasionally on the doorsteps. No we don't. We do however want to solve the congestion problems in Colchester, which is certainly not likely to happen while Rodney Bass and Essex County Council remain in charge of our roads.
I will admit that I enjoyed walking down the largely car-free Brook Street on Saturday and breathing in the fume-free air for once. Pollution has been a big problem down there for years due to traffic volume. However it is obvious that this closure is causing huge and unnecessary disruption to many.
The cost of closing Brook Street and replacing the mini-roundabout with traffic lights is £440,000. That is £440,000 of council tax payers' money. Imagine it flowing down a drain... I know that may be hard given how so many of our drains are blocked due to failure to maintain them. It won't make any difference at all to Colchester's traffic congestion, however the weeks of disruption ahead will at least allow Rodney Bass to appear to be doing something.

To solve congestion will be a long process and must involve schemes to introduce more cycling lanes and to encourage car sharing. We need to ensure that our roads aren't full of potholes so that the traffic can flow more easily.
Essex County Council currently has £70 million to spend on roads, yet Ipswich Road is full of potholes and Mr Bass is wasting chunks of the money on hare-brained schemes like this Brook St fiasco instead of putting more cycle lanes in.
Just getting a few drivers to car share or cycle would make a huge difference.

Just a 1% reduction in car use would lead to an 18% reduction in journey times.

AIR QUALITY

We need an air quality strategy in Colchester and that should start with forcing the 8 bus companies to use cleaner buses. Buses also need to become more reliable and to be staffed by friendly drivers if we are to entice more people onto them. Which is why we need national regulation of buses.
In the mean time, the Borough Council does have the power to use Section 106 money (the bonus it received for building all its new houses) to pay for the conversion of old polluting buses into cleaner ones. It should do so.

RODNEY BASS

It is wrong for the upkeep of our roads to be in the hands of people who don't live and work in Colchester. Therefore we must campaign for our roads to be controlled by the borough council rather than at county level. In the mean time, I suggest that Brook Street be renamed Rodney Street in Mr Bass'  honour. Gven that we are all well and truly up Rodney Street until control of our roads is returned to the borough.

Challenging Lib Dem Plans For Huge New Towns Near Colchester

You may have seen my recent letters in the Gazette regarding 'West Tey'. On 23rd February I attended a borough council scrutiny meeting at the town hall in which the Liberal Democrat councillor for Castle Ward Bill Frame, who is the councillor responsible for planning, outlined plans for a series of huge new towns on the outskirts of Colchester. These would be built on greenfield sites, open countryside, with two planned in the first instance and more to follow. Countryside around Marks Tey (the "West Tey" proposal), Langham and on the Essex-Tendring border near Essex University are all being mooted as possible sites. The leader of Colchester Borough Council Paul Smith (Lib Dem) has described the proposal as having, "great potential". In other words he is all for it. A petition against the West Tey proposal already has over 6000 signatures on it, however the council are doing all they can to kick this petition into the long grass and to avoid having to hold a full council debate over the issue.
Cllr Frame is using a clever piece of flim-flam in order to disguise the nature of the proposals. He is calling the new towns "garden settlements". At the scrutiny meeting several councillors clearly had no idea what a garden settlement was, which allowed Cllr Frame to wax lyrical about 19th century urban idealism, Cadbury homes at Bournville and all to use all manner of nice sounding eco-friendly terminology. However reality soon emerged. These are new towns with as much housing as possible and the average cost of each home will be £200,000 each. Cllr Frame explained how this housing would be affordable and you could almost hear the sound of jaws hitting the floor. Out of touch doesn't even begin to cover it.
This is a classic example of green sounding language being used to disguise urban sprawl and countryside loss. "Garden settlements" conjures up images of pretty cottages in the Cotswolds with thatched rooves and lush gardens brimming with roses. The reality will be new towns crammed with expensive and large modern houses. It is a similar disingenuous approach to the use of confusing acronyms such as SUE (Sustainable Urban Extension) to disguise developments and lend them a green veneer.

COUNTRYSIDE LOSS

Should the West Tey  plan go ahead, large amounts of countryside near Marks Tey and Braintree would be concreted over with 14,000 houses. Coggeshall would also be seriously affected and become just an offshoot of the main new town (see map below):

There would also be a large increase in traffic on the roads around Braintree, Marks Tey and Witham.
Rather than protecting the countryside, the plan simply involves moving the urban sprawl a few miles further out from Colchester and dumping it there.

 INFRASTRUCTURE PROMISES

Cllr Frame has suggested that the new towns will contain their own infrastructure, schools, shops and healthcare facilities so that pressure will not be increased on Colchester's already stretched services. Frankly if you believe this, you may as well believe in Santa Claus and leprechauns. Colchester has grown by 24,000 people and thousands of new houses since 2001, yet the rate of infrastructure investment has not kept up with this expansion. Our hospital is struggling to cope, our roads jammed up and our bus station remains a joke. If they can't secure the investment needed for Colchester, then why should we believe that they will do it for the new towns? Pressure will just be further increased on Colchester's services as the new residents drive to Colchester.
Developers tend to promise the earth in terms of infrastructure in order to secure planning permission. Afterwards they negotiate down their responsibilities in order to maximise profits. The basis of any negotiation process is to go in hard in the first instance so that the resulting compromises are in your favour. Unfortunately, given the lack of infrastructure to go with Colchester's huge recent growth, the current council seem to lack the energy to do this. Its almost as if their approach to developers and central government is to raise the white flag.


HOMES FOR THE NEXT GENERATION?

Cllr Frame has claimed that the new houses, 14,000 at "West Tey" alone, are to house the next generation.
Yet how on earth would young first-time buyers be able to afford £200,000 homes given the proliferation of increased student debt and zero-hours contracts which Cllr Frame's party pushed through when in government?  The reality is that this is an expansion programme and part of a growth, growth, growth agenda.
The new housing he has provided since 2001 has simply increased the Colchester population by 24,000. These were not primarily homes for the local young.

THE NEED FOR SOCIAL AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING

We do need to utilise brownfield sites to provide homes for local young people and families in need. We also need to make renting a viable alternative to buying as this is the only way to stabilise house prices. I explain how to do both here:
http://markgoachergreen.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/we-need-new-approach-to-housing-and.html


 

Natalie Bennett is Coming to Colchester: Monday April 11th.

 

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett will be in Colchester for the day, supporting the Green candidates standing in the council elections in May. She'll be using the Waiting Room as a base to go out and meet local residents, to campaign on the doorstep and explain how voting for Green policies will be good for us all.

Come and share a delicious and reasonably priced vegetarian meal with Natalie and members of the local party.Please email pamnelson@ntlworld.com to confirm booking if you'd like to join us for:

LIGHT LUNCH – 12-2pm
Vegetable soup and selection of spelt / wholemeal / rye rolls £4
Selection of cakes from £1.50-£2.50

Afternoon Tea for older people – 2-3pm

SUPPER – 5.30-7.30pm
Spring vegetable casse...role with herby dumplings £5
Rhubarb spice cake £2.50

The day finishes with a public meeting from 7.30- 9.30pm, all welcome. Both myself and Natalie will be speaking.

Catering by Good Souls Bakery. Vegetables from Bennison Farm.

 

NB: The Waiting Room is located next to Firstsite.

 

The Green Party's Classic 1989 European Election Video

The Year that the Green Party won 15% of the national vote.

Nature Notes 1: Frogs

The frogs have been spawning in my pond and three clumps of frogspawn have appeared. Spring is when frogs and toads are most active (from February onwards to be precise) as this is the breeding season when they migrate to the spawning ponds. Very often frogs and toads return to the same pond every year and this is usually the one in which they were born. Toads tend to be fastidious about this, while frogs are more likely to try a new garden pond. When frogs start migrating varies and they won't travel on frosty nights, but usually they are on the move by February. Once spawning begins, the males make their 'purring croaks' and the water is alive with splashes, kicks and frogs scampering about everywhere.

UK Frog and Toad Decline

There are three species of frogs and two species of toads in the British Isles. These are the common frog, edible frog, marsh frog, common toad and natterjack toad. It is common frogs that reside in my pond. Frogspawn can be distinguished from toadspawn because it is laid in clumps while toadspawn is laid in strands. Toads are squatter in appearance than frogs and move with a clumsy walk rather than hopping. Modern farming practices, urbanisation and pollution are devastating frog and toad populations around the world, with almost a third of global species under threat.
In the UK, numbers of natterjack toads have declined by 75% since 1900. According to a 2011 report by the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) Trust, common frogs are becoming less common in the south of England, especially in areas which have experienced most development in recent decades.

Common Frog

Natterjack Toad

You can find a list of amphibian and reptile conservation groups in the UK here:
Amphibian & Reptile Groups in the UK   

How To Encourage Frogs and Toads into Your Garden

Frogs have declined so much in the open countryside due to modern farming methods that gardens are now a vital habitat, indeed it is probably the case that without gardens frogs and toads would be extinct across whole areas of the UK. To encourage frogs and toads into your garden you need to create a 'frog & toad larder' ie don't try to get rid of slugs, snails and plant-eating insects. Let the frogs eat them. Also you need to build a pond. A pond can be a small, ready made plastic one from a garden centre (like mine). Almost any garden pond is likely to be suitable for frogs. The pond can be shaded but not too shaded as tadpoles do better in warm water which gets some sunshine. It is good to leave some long grass and a rockery around the pond.

Further Reading:

"Frogs & Toads" by Trevor Beebee (Whittet Books, London, 1985)

A Green Vision For Colchester

          LET's MAKE COLCHESTER A GREAT PLACE

                                  TO LIVE IN AGAIN!

When I moved to Colchester 26 years ago it was a pleasant and thriving town with a great community spirit and good public services. Yet look at what is happening now.
It has been allowed to overdevelop at an alarming rate and sprawl out into the green spaces surrounding it with inadequate investment in services to match this.

- Our hospital is underfunded and creaking under the pressure.

- Our streets are strewn with litter and our transport system clogged up.

- Children face a future where their green spaces have been gobbled up by developers.

- Our town centre is increasingly full of closed and derelict shops.

- Essex University students are saddled with massive debts.

- School places are scarce and our schools and colleges underfunded

- Rent levels are rising out of control and social housing provision inadequate.

- The best is not being made of our historical sites and heritage, such as the neglected Butt Road Church.

- There is a widespread perception of rising crime.

- Successive councils have been a pushover for developers while initiating 'pet projects' which have degenerated our facilities such as the downsizing of the bus station and transformation of Greyfriars Adult Learning Centre into a posh hotel most people can't afford.

 

                              ITS A GRIM SITUATION. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

A Green council would aim to turn this around.
We would prioritise brownfield sites for housing rather than green fields and strive to build council housing.
We would get substantive local litter-picking schemes up and running involving public volunteers to be cost effective and we would crackdown on dog-fouling.
We would campaign for more powers to come to the borough from county, including roads. We can't promise to stop all central government imposed green-field urban sprawl and austerity cuts but by golly we would have a good try and you would know exactly what side your councillors are batting for on those issues.
We would put the regeneration of our town centre on the top of our priority list and get the Queen St/Osborne St area regeneration moving.
We would immediately explore the possibility of more cycle lanes in central Colchester and of the compulsory purchase of derelict buildings in the town centre, subject to the requisite legalities.
We would work hard to get more neighbourhood watch schemes up and running.
We would explore ways of reducing the overheads of small local businesses via grants/funds while squeezing more out of large corporations via whatever stealth taxes it is possible for local authorities to increase on them.
We would make far more of Colchester's Civil War and Roman heritage and end the neglect. There would be a Civil War exhibition in the town and a permanent memorial to King Charles I in Castle Park. We would erect a new sign for visitors outside Butt Road Roman Church.
We would work closely with the Church of England to get redundant churches in the town centre such as St Martin's and St Leonards up and running as community church facilities.

DON'T LET THE TORIES TAKE OVER COLCHESTER COUNCIL!

The Tories are desperate to gain control of Colchester Borough Council.
They would be a disaster for Colchester.
Previous Tory councils have tried to build houses all over Highwoods Country Park and were responsible for wasting £1000s on the failed attempt to regenerate the Queen Street area. The result was the loss of Greyfriars Adult Education Centre, now a posh hotel few can afford, and a row of still derelict shops. It was a Tory council that initiated the downsizing of our bus station to a risible joke having failed to redevelop Osbourne Street.
They were not only incompetent gadflies buzzing from one failed pet-project to another, wasting stacks of  taxpayers' money, they were also a pushover for developers.
Colchester needs strong councillors willing to stand up to central government and developers, not a weak council run by people whose record shows are not up to the job.