Letter to KM Messenger
December 3, 2009 5:08 AM
By Cllr Tony Harwood
By Cllr Tony Harwood
Dear Editor:
I hope that the full significance of the statements by Conservative planning committee member Cllr. Stephen Paine are fully appreciated by your readers (KM Letters 27th November 2009) . His words amount to nothing short of a declaration of war on Maidstone's countryside and and create yet more "clear blue water" between Maidstone Council Conservatives and the Liberal Democrat and Independent opposition. However, coming from an individual who helped force through housing development on irreplaceable ancient woodland at Kingswood this comes as little surprise.
Ironically, it is only a legacy of Mr. Prescott that is currently protecting our local countryside! His PPS3 policy, concentrates new development into built up areas to stimulate inward investment and regeneration. If local Conservatives have their way developers will ditch complex regeneration projects and instead move onto lucrative greenfield sites. If Maidstone Borough is to thrive environmentally, economically and socially our out-of-date offices blocks, blighted and derelict neighbourhoods and declining urban housing estates must be regenerated. The Conservative prescription, outlined by Cllr. Paine, will instead deliver urban decline and stagnation while eroding the priceless "Garden of England" setting of the County Town.
The Conservative "favoured option" of condemning countryside to the south and east of Maidstone to urban sprawl is particularly crass. This area is geographically remote from services (in particular sewerage and wastewater infra-structure) and any new dormitory estates will rely completely upon the car to get to work, schools and the shops. There is no local rail system and the area already suffers significant traffic congestion and pollution. Any suggestion that developers will pay for major infra-structure development under current economic circumstances is naive in the extreme. Further, threatened Otham, Langley, Caring and surrounding hamlets boast some of the finest, most historic, widlife rich and beautiful "ancient countryside" in Kent.
Yours sincerely,
Cllr. Tony Harwood (Lib Dem),
Shadow Cabinet Member for Regeneration
Maidstone Borough Council.
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