Concern over plan for 26,500 homes
Thursday 14th January 2010, 8:00PM GMT.
Ambitious plans to build up to 26,500 houses across Telford over the next 16 years pose a big threat to the borough wildlife and beauty spots, it was claimed today.
Shropshire Wildlife Trust said it was “extremely concerned” about the plans and demanded the borough’s beautiful and much loved areas should not be damaged in the rush to achieve the target for housing.
Telford & Wrekin Council’s ruling cabinet last November backed the Spatial Strategy Review, drawn up by the West Midlands Regional Assembly, which would see the homes built by 2026.
The Government, however, wants to see more built and believes Telford & Wrekin could accommodate 10,000 more, making a total of 36,500.
Both sides are set to put their cases to a public inquiry this spring.
Sarah Bierley, communications officer at Shropshire Wildlife Trust, said that, while the need for houses was recognised, development had been biting into Telford’s wild areas for years.
She added: “For example, Granville, one of the town’s most special areas, with its rich wildlife and fine legacy of industrial archaeology, has repeatedly been eroded by construction of houses and other kinds of development.
Isolation
“Further proposals are currently in the pipeline which would bring increasing isolation and fragmentation.”
Mrs Bierley said the trust had been campaigning for many years for stronger protection for Telford’s green spaces and is now calling for the establishment of new Local Nature Reserves and the extension of existing ones.
She said the trust wanted to see Dothill, which was already a designated Wildlife Site, given LNR status which should cover a further 13 hectares of the land.
The trust also wants to see both the Madeley Court pitmounds and Wrockwardine Woods made LNRs and the boundaries of Granville nature reserve extended.
Councillor Adrian Lawrence, the borough council’s cabinet member for environment, said: “The figure of 26,500 homes is a West Midlands Region target for Telford and Wrekin to 2026, determined via the regional spatial strategy with input from Telford & Wrekin Council and to be agreed by government.
“We would like to reassure Shropshire Wildlife Trust that we are committed to retaining Telford & Wrekin’s unique environment while continuing to meet the expanding housing needs of our vibrant borough.”
By Simon Hardy
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simply rediculous, its too much, telford needs housing but not that much, it should less than half that and it should all be in dawley and lawley not in shropshire proper
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Our native and natural diversity is quickly being replaced by a concrete hell.
Globalization and overpopulation is killing Britain.
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It’s good to see Shropshire Wildlife Trust expressing concern, albeit somewhat belatedly (they failed to make any response when the council reduced the area of the Town Park by dozens of acres several years ago).
As your article says, “Telford & Wrekin Council’s ruling cabinet last November backed the Spatial Strategy Review, drawn up by the West Midlands Regional Assembly (an un-elected quango). The council’s own Strategic Housing Land Allocation Assessment, or SHLAA, shows that precious little of the open space within the designated area of the former new town hasn’t been approved for potential housing development.
The council wants to see 26,000 additional homes, the government 36,000, Cllr Lawrence says “we are committed to retaining Telford & Wrekin’s unique environment while continuing to meet the expanding housing needs of our vibrant borough”. How much of this ‘unique environment” is going to vanish under new housing developments developments – where exactly are tens of thousands of new residents coming from, going to work, spend their leisure time, receive medical treatment? The plans only seem to mention housing, not infrastructure.
Only this week I heard that the playing fields of the former Madeley Court School are about to be covered in housing – similar plans are afoot at Stirchley and the Phoenix School at Dawley (the school itself is to be rebuilt on the public open space of the Portley and Paddock Mount pitbanks.
Last week the council boasted about plans for a major sports complex based on Telford Rugby Club, whilst failing to mention that the expanded new facilities can only be provided by encroaching further on the shrinking open space of our Town Park.
Our council (this isn’t a party political matter, Labour were just as bad) are hell-bent on achieving ‘city status”, which will benefit who exactly? Certainly not local residents.
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hopefully they do it so all the foreigners and immigrants can move in there!
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We live in one of the most beautiful counties in England so why, why do our two local authorities want to spoil it by building ever more characterless modern housing developments. I find Telford in particular to be a drab unattractive town. Why not preserve the green areas it has left; once they are gone, they are gone forever!
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The Government think that Telford can support 36,000 new houses by 2016? At an average of 3 occupants per house, that’s over 108,000 more people. The population now must be around the 150,000 mark, so we’re talking about more than quarter of a million people in six years’ time.
Does Telford have the infrastructure to cope? The last time I looked, the local authority seemed hell-bent on installing all kinds of crazy restrictions on the free flow of traffic (reducing parts of a dual carriageway to single carriageway, for example), so how are these people going to get around? Or are we expected to accept large jams as part of the normal daily routine, like in other large towns and cities?
@shrewsbury (comment #4): That’s a pretty ignorant comment and one which I would find particularly offensive if I was an immigrant or foreigner. You make Salopians sound like a bunch of xenophobes.
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Lets take a leaf out of the book of Shrewsbury by building housing areas of extreme natural beauty such as Ditherington, Castlefields and Gains park..
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What an advert for a breeding cap. Brave new world here we come, I can forsee the creation of an enclave of non-productive public sector government drones. Nightmare.
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A lot of the redicted demand for new housing is because of smaller household size (more single and divorced people) rather than the 2.4 children family unit one might expect so I wouldn’t have thought the population increase would run into hundreds of thousands. However it is still a significant increase. We should remember though that Telford is the fastst growing town in the midlands so demand is there for these homes.
We should also remember that Telford was planned for a poulation of 225,000 by the start of the century and as such is far below its identified capacity, it has one of the lowest population densities of any town in the country which is relaiely unsustainable in the long term.
Regarding the infrastructure, Telford may not have the abiity to deal with such a population increase right now but it would be easier to increase capacity here than in any normal town in the region.
I’d rather have a high amount of new housing within Telford than spread out across the rest of Shropshire which I feel would be far more damaging.
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Good comment Grey but let’s have sustainable 21st century housing and non of these poxy boxy peudo period houses with plastic chimney stacks, dormers etc like Shrewsbury keeps building, possibly in an attempt to twin with or actually become Disneyland!
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I couldn’t agree with you more eva. The houses under construction at the millennium community and parts of Lawley using more modern designs look very intersting to say the least. Far better than the pastiche of most residential developments.
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With such a large population of 225,000 we are going to need at least another TWO asdas as well as the present two…. ;-)
I can’t see how Telford can be classed as the fastest growing town in the Midlands when my friend has been out of work since May and can’t find a job round here that he isn’t too “overqualified” for. What good are houses without the jobs, roads and hospitals that have the capacity to accomodate such?
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Looking at this map for possible future land development, I see that a large area is marked up for the Huntington area.
http://www.telford.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/A0C7B62F-F8D6-4B61-9449-E64BA3990DE5/0/Lightmoor.pdf
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I’m all for building in areas like ercall magna, newport etc. build whole communities on green field land and I mean 20 or 30 thousand homes with schools, shops, hospitals. Sprean people out and not go for cramming them into telford leaving the rural areas out of it. Rural areas have the space so build out their.But like I said, a decent amount of homes not just in six or sevens, aim high and go for 30 thousand homes with everything the community needs to support it.
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dont blame them its barmy the figures are too high for shropshier and teflord it will ruin the countryside which makes this place so magic
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clealry this figure was not arrived at by shropshire people but imposed from outside by beurocrats with no respect for local people
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the people of shropshire have been subjected to low quality construction for too long now, the wildlife trust are correct this is ruining our lives, blighting our wonderful county with cheap nasty crime filled estates often of non shropshrie people – we must be able to stop this through planning and democratic control on these whitheall targets which are too high to be socially and environmentally acceptable
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Went to see the new houses at Ketley, Grey, and was well impressed. It is a really attractive development, nice mixture of housing and fantastic having energy saving assets as well as good design.
Cannot say the same for the development at Lawley. The houses were aesthetically awful, no consideration to how the fenstration worked. Inside horrible plastic ventilation grills probably because the windows had no trickle vents and very low ceilings. My son was scraping his head under every light fitting.
The design of the houses was terrible IMO and they felt cramped and oppressive inside. Pity as the site was nice.
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it’s ok building more houses but where are all the jobs gonna come from to support every one ?? or is this just another way for the government to moan
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Brian2, I don’t care how many Asdas are built as long as they are attractive and contribute positively to the townscape / streetscape. That seems too much to ask for with this council allowing any old development to go ahead. That map comes from the SHLAA, the council has to evalute pretty much every scrap of spare land to see how many houses could theoretically be built. There is then a process of filtering out sites due to their contraints etc before finally appearing in the “Land Allocations” development plan document. It doesn’t automatically mean houses will be built there (though I expect they will be eventually). There is a similar process called an Employment Land Review where they assess land for its viabillity to provide employment land.
Eva, yes Ketley is better than the majority of Lawley but some of the houses look better than others and some planned for the future look easily as cool as Ketley. Each housebuilder seems to be doing its own thing out there so it looks like its going to be a real mixed bag.
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I now see that Telford is back in the lowest wages league table that it was so prominent in back in the late seventies/early eighties. No doubt building a few thousand houses without the well paid jobs to go with them, will put it firmly back to the unemployment blackspot that it was 25- 30 years ago.
Do we ever learn? New faces making the decisions but same old mistakes!
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Grey, I too don’t care how many Asdas they build and frankly they can’t look any worse than a lot of the new developments going up or being planned for the future but at least Asda stores aren’t being paid for out of our council tax and aren’t another example of the total waste that this council seem to favour from our council taxes, which they seem to treat as a bottomlesss pit for their crazy, pointless whims.
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