Housing developments: affordable, accountable and sustainable
Dover District Councillors (DDC) (chair cllr Scales) shouldn’t have okayed the Western Heights and Farthingloe development, according to High Court judges in September 2016.
Dover and Deal Green Party submitted the following planning objection to DDC in August:
“The local economy needs to support small, local, tourist businesses and the biodiverse Kent Downs AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) underpins this, this is one of the many reasons it is not demonstrated that it is in the public interest.” . . .
“It is ridiculous to say it is sustainable development; creating as it does a national precedent for building on an AONB and being opposed as such by CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England), Kent Wildlife Trust and Natural England; building on a much-loved greenfield site the Kent Downs AONB; having no commitment to low-carbon building methods or low-carbon building design. It is ridiculous to say that the development is in the public interest when it has no provision for affordable housing much less any provision for social, rented housing in a town which is crying out for it.”
D+D Green party activist Beccy Sawbridge was at Unite the union’s Housing roadshow in Dover on 21 Sept. Their campaign overlaps with ours a lot:
- quality refits
- building lots of social, council, quality, rented housing
- introducing rent controls in the private rented sector.
We want to suspend the ‘right-to-buy’ Housing Association properties which cuts the social rented housing available.
The Conservative’s Housing and Planning Act 2016 is to blame for this and we oppose it.
We welcome the Connaught Park brownfield development whole-heartedly.