Growing pains
25 October 2005
The big news in Stevenage this week is undoubtedly the Deputy Prime Minister’s announcement that he is minded to approve plans to build approximately 3 600 homes on land to the west of the town. I know that not everyone will welcome this but I do.
We desperately need new homes in Stevenage. The Council has more than three thousand people on its housing waiting list and, thanks to the Right to Buy legislation, it also has an ever-decreasing stock of properties to draw on. That is why there are currently two hundred and fifty homeless families in the town.
Every day I receive letters from constituents desperate for somewhere to live. Every day I have to tell them that, although there is money available to build new homes in the Stevenage area, planning constraints mean that there simply is not enough land available to put them on.
Now the Deputy Prime Minister is thinking of lifting some of these constraints and allowing us to start building. Even better, he has stipulated that, if the development does go ahead, over a quarter of the new homes built must be affordable ones. This means that, at last, I can offer something other than hope to all those people who write to me.
Stevenage needs to grow. At present its population is just too small to provide a department store with the turnover it needs to survive. Nor does it have enough people in the higher income brackets living in it for chains like Marks and Spencer’s to upgrade their town centre stores.
The West of Stevenage development gives us the chance to house some of our people and to balance our town economically. I am just sorry that it has taken us so long to decide to do it.
Loosening the Green Belt
I know that opponents of the development will talk of concreting over England and abolishing the Green Belt. But this is, quite simply, not true. Twice as much land has been put back into the Green Belt as has been taken out. Remember that it is homes, not runways, that are going to be built in a well defined area. Homes with gardens and trees. Homes for families, for single people and specially adapted ones for the elderly.
With the explosion in Britain’s elderly population these homes are particularly needed. Schools in Stevenage are having to shut, or merge, because there are not enough children living in some areas of the town. The reason for this is simple – far too many family-sized homes in the town are occupied by a single elderly person. These occupants would love to move into smaller houses or bungalows, with more manageable gardens, or even into flats with no gardens at all. But sadly, there simply is not enough of these types of accommodation available in Stevenage to meet the demand. So schools close, elderly people struggle to maintain overly large homes and families are crammed into bedsits. This is not the right way to go about things.
Getting it right
I do hope that if the Deputy Prime Minister does finally give permission for homes to be built on the land to the west of Stevenage the people of the area will stop fighting each other and join forces to ensure that it is a truly sustainable, and beautiful, development.
We have the chance to create something really good here with environmentally friendly homes; pleasant play spaces, well designed schools, up to date surgeries, pedestrian friendly roads and decent cycle tracks. Let’s try to get it right this time and show the rest of the country what Hertfordshire can do when it puts its mind to it.
Farewell
As you know, this is the last ever issue of the
Stevenage Herald. I will miss reading it and writing for it. We will still have the
Comet
but, good as that is, the fact remains that the people of Stevenage will no longer have a newspaper entirely devoted to them.
Still, that is progress. Things get bigger and my column, if it survives, will get smaller. In fact, only extracts from it will probably be printed each week. However, if you still want to read the whole thing, all you have to do is access the Comet’s website on www.thecomet.net and there it will be.
Finally, let me say a big thank you to the editor and staff of the Herald for all the news, information and pleasure that they have given me, and thousands of Stevenage citizens, over the years. It has been nice knowing you.
Barbara Follett MP
