As national newspapers talk of homelessness ,soaring house prices and the inability of the young to get on the 'housing ladder', and even HMG claims we need ½ million homes by 2020, the East Kent Mercury today (13/11) covers opposition to two proposed developments in Deal on the grounds that they might not be built with parking space for 1.6 cars each.
Houses like these are, I would suggest, exactly what Deal and other towns need, high density housing close to transport facilities and shops. Changing demographics mean we are short of one/two bedroom accommodation and this must be the way forward unless we wish to cover our countryside with soul-less developments like Whitfield, where half the land is tarmacked over to serve our 1.6 vehicles, whereupon we can say goodbye to being in the Garden of England.
Let's be honest about it for once. Dover District Councillors would love to see unrestricted development (though they will of course deny this!). The more people there are in the District, the more important they feel, the less chance there is of being subsumed into a neighbouring authority and the gravy train hitting the buffers, and the more staff they will need (already DDC has four employees paid over £100,000 a year).
There is, of course, also the Ponzi Scheme of the New Homes Bonus which means that if, for example, one builds 2,000 homes at Whitfield, each with a Council Tax of £2,000, DDC will receive from Central Government £4,000,000 a year for the first six years (over 25% of the Council's total income stream , which means lower Council Tax and the grateful electorate re-electing the same idiots).
For Deal your Council would like nothing more than the Northern Relief Road cutting round from Sholden to the Ringwould straight, ostensibly to reduce traffic in Deal, (where little through traffic exists) but in reality opening up yet more prime farmland to housing development as it would seem a shame to waste such excellent transport links for everybody's 1.6 cars.
Be careful what you wish for, and be careful what you protest about. There are laws of unintended consequences.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
