Part of the consulation process |
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However, much depends on Britain's continuing economic prosperity and some of us doubt the stability of a system so heavily reliant on consumer debt and rising house prices. Ms Montgomery explained matters to my sceptical self, commenting that " Newton Longville relies heavily on Milton Keynes and MKDC and Aylesbury Vale District Councils need to get their acts together on how they are going to deal with the village.' She said that space for half the intended growth had been found within Milton Keynes' existing boundaries. Regarding health, Ms Montgomery said: ' The government recognise that they have to catch up. The hospital has an expansion plan for 450-500 more beds. A new hospital is not going to happen. 'We have also done a lot of work with landowners on the east and western sides and have a good idea where the money for infrastructure is coming from and discussions with the Department of Health are to the fore. Developers will make payment to enhance acutre and emergency facilities and we have asked them to contribute to early provision for GP services, to enable new facilities to come on stream as people move in. The plan is not to do things in a piecemeal fashion. We have a lot more work to do to prove the case.' Asked what would happen if jobs did not expand as predicted, Ms Montgomery said : 'The market will limit the housing if there are no jobs'. I took issue with this point, arguing that there are already many commuting to London, where they have been priced out of the housing market and many others commute into Milton Keynes because they can't aford to live there. I also reminded her of the considerable deprivation and neglect in certain parts of Milton Keynes, suggesting that this situation was unlikely to be improved by a preoccupation with building more housing which many locals would not be able to afford. On the subject of regeneration, Ms Montgomery said that rather than look at schemes for wholesale regeneration, there was a need to find out why certain schemes work and others do not. I raised the matter of public transport which currently, according to MKDC funded research, carries only 4% of travellers within MK boundaries, an area famous for its car friendly grid roads. She said that it was necessary to find out what it would take to get people out of their cars. We need to decrease the impact of cars and look at how we are going to move around. Water supply is another worrying issue. As one local woman told Ms Montgomery, ' You can't make it rain.' I reminded the gathering, that Anglia Water had said that providing enough water for the region was outside their 28 year business plan and that that the leader of the South Eastern County Councils had predicted persistent drought as a result of the growth plan. Ms Montgomery informed us that the new housing was essential to keep up with the growth of population, but ' in terms of individual issues, English Partnerships are keen to take all comments back. If the scheme cannot be integrated and implementable, it cannot go forward.' Tim Welch of North Bucks Parish Councils Consortium expressed fears that communities would coalesce and be lost. Ms Montgomery said that 'the consultant team have to come up with a plan that can gain public support. We know that there is concern about areas of natural beauty. By the end of the month we will have to collate data and by Sepetmber of this year we'll publish directions data and, in October, we'll go on to publish some spatial options to show how growth will work, but we haven't investigated the options up to 2031. 'We'll go out to consultation between January and March 2006. We will have a plan which won't be statutory, but local authorities will roll it into the big plan. We are doing things now which will have implications for the plan, like traffic modelling for the A5. Houses follow jobs and affordability is a big issue. The Health people will tell you that our forecasts are OK. We are looking at what is happening abroad.' I still cannot disguise my scepticism for the whole scheme and asked if the proposed build rate and 70,000 planned new homes would be go ahead even if a sustainable plan could nor be demonstrated. Ms Montgomery said that she didn't know. She repeated the view that the market would manage growth, adding that planning views had changed during the 1970s. She said that you could not have people moving out of London and not have what they wanted in their new locations. However, she added that this was not Christmas and people could not expect everything that they wanted from the new development. There would we shortages of some key workers. Teachers were not such a problem in the English Partnership view, but ' we don't grow enough of our own health workers.' She explianed that home helps had little career structure and candidates could choose more lucrative employment in local warehouses. I advanced the argument, to a seemingly nonplussed Ms Montgomery, that we were being sold the idea of a glittering phase two Milton Keynes that was all show. There might be some spanking new buildings but the thinking behind it was as old fashioned and parsimonious as ever. There were no solid initiatives for better transport. One of the only sections of the east west rail link still working is facing the possibility of closure and there are no significant new road plans, nor is there any solid up front provision for water supply and better health. Local schools also leave a lot to be desired and many families live in extreme deprivation. I quoted J K Galbraith and his famous phrase ( well famous to us economists! ) ' private wealth and public squalor' as an apt description of Milton Keynes. As I began to rant a little to Ms Montgomery, she asked me, 'Where is all this leading?' That is what I would like to know.' |
