In 2004, John Prescott - then Deputy Prime Minister - decided to increase the available housing stock in Great Britain in order to demolish the high price of housing.  The thing that he and other Governments in the past overlooked was that house prices are generally controlled by natural market forces.  So what happens when you apply a ‘spin’ to a self-regulating market?  When the natural brake on prices occurs, it is made much worse by the momentum added by artificial meddling.  This is where we find ourselves today.  We have inherited the handiwork of the now discredited Minister.  

Prices began to tumble because of the credit crunch.  They began to tumble at the same time that Prescott’s pet project, the West Northamptonshire  Development Corporation was attempting to boost the housing stock of Northamptonshire by 65,000 new homes.  The effect of this mismanagement of  housing stock is having a disproportional impact upon new residents to the west of Northampton and has turned this side of town into a ghost town full of empty new houses and surrounded by a semi-derelict area. Residents may have to wait several years before their estates are completed and their roads are adopted by the Council.  This was the expansion area that WNDC called the ‘Gateway to Northampton’, yet it now looks like a half-finished, unkempt and abandoned wasteland.  

How has this happened?  What are our town planners doing to rescue the town from this disgraceful state of affairs?  A number of weeks ago, Stephen Kelly, Director of Planning at WNDC was asked at an Upton Parish Council meeting what his organisation could do about the tangible lack of essential infrastructure such as roads, schools and medical centres that is now blighting the lives of residents of these new developments to the west of the town.  He was asked specifically whether he thought  the WNDC would continue to grant planning permission for large new housing estates on green field sites, when nearby Upton had been told that they can’t expect to have a medical centre for another 5 years, following the pullout of the builders from their site.  

Kelly admitted that WNDC had no powers to deny planning permission simply because the provision of essential infrastructure wasn’t keeping up with the rate of expansion.

In the midst of the biggest downturn in the housing market in 20-30 years, Redrow Homes are currently bidding for planning permission for a further 2,600 new houses at Upton Lodge/Sandy Lane.  Paradoxically, they are also claiming that they are suffering badly from the credit crunch and are having to scale back their operations and that they, like most other builders, are mothballing their unfinished sites.  When consulted on this proposal, the Borough Council were told that this proposed site didn’t have adequate roads, that a secondary school cited by the developer would not be provided by the County Council and that even the required sewerage infrastructure had not been planned by Anglian Water Authority.  And yet, still they continue to follow Prescott’s dogma to try to award planning permission against all the odds for thousands of new homes.  

The pundits tell us that this downturn is set to last for at least two years.  House prices may fall by up to 25%.  We could be sympathetic towards the plight of the builders, but it is the residents who are left with the mess.  It is the town that is left with the disgrace of its failed expansion clearly on display to all who visit from the west.  The Northants Residents Alliance are calling upon Borough and County Councillors to stop any further irresponsible development on new green field sites, until such time as these abandoned sites have been properly completed and adopted by the Council.  Furthermore, we will be asking our local representatives to apply pressure to the Developers to clean up the abandoned sites, carry out vermin control and provide the residents with an environment that is less like a bomb site and more like the estates they were promised in the builders’ glossy brochures.  If the councillors need any further incentive, other than concern for their voters, they might like to consider that residents of the new, unadopted estates will be asking for rate rebates, because they should not be required to pay for services such as roads, pavements, schools and medical centres, that clearly may not be provided for many years into the future.

The Wild West of Northampton .......

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