Democracy (sometimes) works

Two recent events show that sometimes, to some extent, democracy works.

The first is the Coventry Local Development Plan, with its Issues and Options Core Strategy, whch will be open for consultation from September 19. This will set the framework for planning application decisions up to 2020. There was a previous version of this, which got close to being adopted in May 2010, which would have allowed 33,500 new house builds, with many on green belt land. That version was developed under the Labour government regional housing targets, and under the local Conservative administration. But there was widespread strong opposition to it, and the current version is based on the premiss that there will be no building on the Green Belt, and the total build will be only 11,500. This was written under the local Labour administration, and has received some local Conservative support.. In other words, both parties have reversed their positions and will give people what they wanted.
The second event is the local Conservative party’s deselection of Councillor John Gazey as candidate for Bablake ward, much of which is Green Belt. Councillor Gazey favoured an increase in the Coventry population from 300 thousand to 400 thousand – an increase which was expected to happen as a consequence of building houses, people buying them and moving to the area, and then jobs somehow appearing for those people – a curious logic.  More rationally, Councillor Gazey and his family own considerable land in Bablake, and he has always declared this interest.
Councillor Gazey has said “There are some people in the local party who want a nice compliant solution. I am talking with people in the party nationally about the wisdom of their indirect influence.” The compliance he mentions is perhaps going along with what the electorate wants, which is always a wise move in a democracy.  I wish all the best for John Gazey. Hopefully the national party will support him and re-select him for Bablake ward.

The battle of Charterhouse Fields

See photos on facebook:

More on Elm Tree Copse

This takes the story of the post below forward a little.

In a phone coversation with Robert Penlington, he suggested that Coventry City Council were only concerned with planning aspects of this up to the City boundary, which runs across the site, and that beyond this, planning control was down to Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council. This is correct – crazy as it may sound, both local authorities considered planning permission separately.

Mr. Penlington referred me to a Mr. Alan Jarvis, a manager at Taylor Wimpey in charge of the development.  We discussed the tree issues. I referred to the Tree Retention and Protection Plan, which is on Coventry City Council planning portal site, here . This is dated October 2010. Mr Jarvis had an updated version dated March 2011. We discussed tree T26, which is shown as being retained on the October version. Mr. Jarvis explained that on the March version, it is shown as being cut down.

The problem is, planning permission was granted in Jan 2011, which must have been on teh basis of teh October survey.

Further discussion with Mr. Penlington reveals that he did attend a site visit in March, where trees on the Coventry half were discussed. He was then asked to withdraw. It appears that after this, the plan was changed and T26 was doomed.

Thisis a photo of part of the site taken by the TPO officer, probably in October 2010:

and this is what it is like now

That stump in the middle is probably T26.

N&B gave planning permission on April 4 2011. It looks like something happened on that site visit in March.

Elm Tree Copse

This is about a housing development and trees.

Keresley Newlands House was a large house in Keresley, literally on the border of Coventry and Nuneaton. It was used as an old people’s home, run by Coventry City Council, until it was closed about 20 years ago, and the building was demolished. Since then, the site became what developers call ‘derelict’. It started to return to its natural state, which is woodland – the ancient Forest of Arden returned.

But Coventry City Council is short of cash, so it granted planning permission to Taylor Wimpey to build 38 houses on the land. Bitter irony that they invented the name ‘Elm Tree Copse’ for it.

A condition of the planning permission was that several specified trees were to be left untouched.  Looking at the site and comparing it with their plan, it looks like they have cut down 4 individual trees which they should not, and one entire group.

A preserved tree

A letter has been written to Mr. A. Taylor (of Taylor Wimpey) requesting a meeting on the site to clarify matters. Things do not look good. If they have cut down these trees, the planning permission simply requires them to replace them. So they just need to go down the nearest garden centre and buy a few saplings.

A related issue is that there were several trees which had been dedicated to individuals who had lived in the old people’s home, and these trees had a Tree Preservation Order on them. We need to check whether they are still standing. But even here there is little chance of justice. The maximum fine for felling a tree with a TPO in a Magistrate’s Court is £25000. When you are selling 38 houses for £200000 each – what difference does that make?

Making Sense of the Financial Crisis in the Era of Peak Oil

This is a notice of a meeting hosted by Transition Coventry.  Nicole M. Foss is

Nicole M. Foss

co-editor of The Automatic Earth, where she writes under the name Stoneleigh. She and her writing partner have been chronicling and interpreting the on-going credit crunch as the most pressing aspect of our current multi-faceted predicament. The site integrates finance, energy, environment, psychology, population and real politik in order to explain why we find ourselves in a state of crisis and what we can do about it. Prior to the establishment of TAE, she was previously editor of The Oil Drum Canada, where she wrote on peak oil and finance. Nicole runs the Agri-Energy Producers’ Association of Ontario, where she has focused on farm-based biogas projects and grid connections for renewable energy. While living in the UK she was a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, where she specialized in nuclear safety in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, and conducted research into electricity policy at the EU level. Her academic qualifications include a BSc in biology from Carleton University in Canada (where she focused primarily on neuroscience and psychology), a post-graduate diploma in air and water pollution control, the common professional examination in law and an LLM in international law in development from the University of Warwick in the UK. She was granted the University Medal for the top science graduate in 1988 and the law school prize for the top law school graduate in 1997. Please put the word out about this meeting. If you can let people know, please do!

The meeting takes place on Thursday 24 March, Coventry City Council House, 7.30pm. All welcome.

TUC day of action 26 March

A protest against public spending cuts will take place in London on the 26 March. 500 coaches will travel from across the UK. For more details, follow this link.

Or across the pond, a similar need to take action

Coventry Green Party Action Day

Coventry Green Party are holding an Action Day on Saturday 5 February.  We will hand out survey leaflets  and talk to local residents about their concerns. This starts outside Jubilee Crescent Community Centre in Radford, Coventry CV6 3ES, starting at 10 am. All helpers would be very welcome.

Warwickshire Wildlife Trust campaign against HS2

Warwickshire Wildlife Trust points out that “A comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the route will not be available prior to the public consultation in 2011″. Full story here.

City Council against HS2

As I predicted, Coventry City Council yesterday voted unanimously against HS2. In fact this was pretty inevitable, since the objective merits of the issue coincided with the political pressures. By-passing Coventry, literally and economically, is clearly bad news.  Reducing the rail service between Coventry and London would itself be unfortunate, but it would also render pointless the Friargate development, which is already causing heartache on all sides. Destroying the rural communities between Coventry, Kenilworth and Meriden is bad. In turn the political pressures all go in the same direction  as well – both Labour and Conservative would have put wards in danger in May if they had supported HS2.

But – so what? The Government promotes the ‘Big Society’ and the idea of  localism, seeking to minimise central government involvement and giving  power to organisations which are as local as possible.  Both the City Council and the various residents action groups obviously fall into this category, and they are all saying the same thing – that HS2 should not happen.  So will the Government ignore both its own philosophy and the voice of the people?

Cov Council unanimous against HS2?

John Mutton

John Mutton, leader of the Labour majority group,  has said they will meet on Monday evening to decide their position on the Motion opposing HS2 to be presented at the full Council meeting on Tuesday. However he said that it was his thinking that they would vote against HS2. If that happens, it means Coventry City Council will unanimously oppose the HS2 proposal.

Things are looking good.