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 Everywhere we see the need for houses. Even though the bottom is about to drop out of the housing market, the Government plan to force through 3 million new houses over the next 19 years.
WNDC were established with the authority to drive through the planning for an additional 125,000 houses for Northamptonshire by 2026 as part of this push.
However, when questioned by residents at a meeting of Upton Parish Council earlier this week, Stephen Kelly, Development Manager for WNDC, admitted that whereas his organisation has the power to provide planning permission to support the massive expansion of the town, they have little influence over bodies such as the Primary Care Trust who will provide medical facilities in the area. This lack of control means that WNDC is empowered to expand our population, but cannot guarantee to make sure essential services like medical centres are supplied to keep up with the growth.
For example, at Upton, Developers have withdrawn from the site stating that economic conditions are no longer suitable for further house building. It so happens that the builders are leaving the site, which was hailed by Prince Charles for its green credentials, having failed to fulfil their promises to build affordable housing, a medical centre, shops and a community facility, which formed part of their permission to build at Upton. Some residents of Upton have been waiting for a local medical centre for five years. Instead they have to make a ten mile round trip to their nearest Doctor - which defeats the ‘sustainability’ principle upon which the Upton site was founded.
Further questioning revealed that this same lack of control extends to our Emergency Services and almost every other essential utility you care to mention. We asked Kelly if there was a point at which the WNDC would realise that building was being allowed (by them) to proceed at a much faster rate than could be sustained by the services and infrastructure that are so essential to sustain modern-day living. In particular we asked if there would come a point when housing growth had to be halted by WNDC in order to allow the infrastructure to catch up thus avoiding unnecessary hardship to local residents. Kelly replied that WNDC has no powers to refuse planning permission on these grounds.
We also know that to date there has been very little offered by the Government in the way of substantial financial support for transport infrastructure. To provide access to an extra 45,000 houses around the west of Northampton town, you would expect to see a substantial new bypass. Instead, sufficient funding could not be raised for a dual carriageway, only enough for just a single carriageway road that isn’t currently planned to join up with any main road in the north of the town. The fact that WNDC are calling this road the West Orbital Bypass is merely to cover up its total inadequacy for purpose. The new road is aimed more at providing a feeder road to 10,000 new homes, rather than attempting to relieve an already congested town centre. (Duston Action Group are currently fighting this woefully inadequate road proposal in the courts.)
We wonder how long it will be before our local politicians wake up to the disaster that is about to befall our town. An increase in population of around 60% without adequate, strategic, co-ordinated and guaranteed funding up front is bordering on the irresponsible. The result will lead to true hardship for everyone in the area. We urge our leaders to take up the cause to persuade the Government to see the error of its ways and direct its energies towards building a new town (such as is happening at Cambridge), with its own infrastructure. It will now be apparent that it was a monumental mistake when our Councils appeared to support the Government’s notion of massive expansion of our already congested County. It’s not too late - after all the houses have yet to be built. It’s absolutely necessary - Our children and grandchildren will never forgive our leaders if they fail us at this critical moment.
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