“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
Mark Twain
A short one this week – from me at least – on a subject that has interested me for years and impacts all of us who endure our hopeless Council.
I would strongly recommend reading the extracts from two T&A readers’ comments which are posted below; these summarise the con trick played out before our very eyes.
It is a betrayal of our city.
Hopeless Cllr Hapless and Chief Crony Cllr R U Sure continue to enable the destruction of the Bradford district with their lame brain housing policy – see here.
To describe this as “policy” is perhaps disingenuous; it is more a cocktail of ineptitude and irresponsibility.
Consider her constant parroting that Bradford has one of the youngest populations in the UK – a statement disputed intelligently below – and claiming that this is a huge positive.
Somebody should tell her the mills have all gone and one can only hope that she and her cronies watched the BBC 2 documentary – The Lost Boys – last weekend. For a significant section of her young population the streets hardly appear paved with gold.
At the same time her administration pursues a policy that builds houses few of the city’s young people will ever be able to afford.
Factor in another point to outline the utter hypocrisy of this. How does a Labour council justify a housing policy that is effectively designed and built by the big house builders with price tags of £300k upwards in a low wage city? Champagne all round!!
The Council’s utter ineptitude in failing to agree a five-year land plan meant that the developers could pick and choose where they wanted to build and, just as importantly, when.
Add to this an idiotic plan to build over 42,000 new homes up to 2030, defying all logic, also allows developers to play the supply and demand card with little resistance.
I make the case that this is local government at its worst with amateurs way out of their depth.
The damage being done to some of the most attractive parts of the Bradford district by this idiocy is unacceptable and a scandal.
Footnote
These are two readers comments – edited where possible – which illustrate the issues clearly and coherently.
11th August 7:03 pm
The Cllr needs correcting. Bradford does not have one of the fastest growing populations in the country. Its population growth is below average for England and, last time I looked, it was even below average for Yorkshire. It may have a higher than average birth rate but that contributes little to growth as a disproportionate number of people move out…
The Government calculation shows 25,000 new homes being required over 15 years. Not the 42,100 the Council has in its plan.
The city/district has more brownfield land than it is acknowledging. Council Officers have set aside a lot of it in ‘employment zones’ so that only factories and warehouses can be built on it.
The Chamber of Commerce flagged concerns about this only a couple of days ago because it generally isn’t suitable (because of location, lack of road links, size of sites etc) for factories and warehouses. It could be used for offices and homes though so why is it still locked away?
The Council needs to review its housing numbers, its spatial strategy and its employment land as a matter of urgency.
Cllr Ross Shaw is defending the indefensible and aiding and abetting the ruination of Bradford.
12th August 7:01 pm
I am seriously concerned that the council plans to go on a massive building spree that will destroy our communities and our environment. The plans are based on old, outdated information initially collected 10 years ago and have not seen significant modifications since 2015.
Can the council really say…that it has asked residents directly, in plain English, if they are happy for all the green space to be built on and our distinct communities to be merged and absorbed into the anonymous mass of the city?
Now, rather than reflect and check that the plan is still relevant, the council intends to accelerate this construction obsession…
The developers…take on community after community with their financial muscle. The odds are stacked against the communities because the council will presume in favour of development and has set itself an unnecessarily high target.
Communities object but because they are small groups of local people they dont have the resources to win.. Too often the answer is we have to build somewhere and this is as good a place as any…
We have to question whether this building programme is needed and if the council is properly informing us of the options and acting on the will of the electorate. There are many reasons for a review.
When it comes to green space, Bradford is already the 2nd most deprived city out of the 10 biggest cities in England with just 18.4% left undeveloped. Our council has determined that they are going to increase the number of dwellings by a staggering 20% in the next 12 years.
All of our villages…will lose their identity and be absorbed into the city’s mass. The loss of this green space will have a massive detrimental effect on the health and well being of the population. You can see the change happening already as the green spaces are eaten up bit by bit. How many views of our beautiful countryside are disappearing behind ugly and cheap looking new housing?
What makes this plan even more astonishing is that housing market conditions indicate that this building is not needed. Bradford has 4,262 houses that have been empty for more than 6 months that is the 3rd highest of any council area in the country; its a figure that has barely changed in the last 6 years.
If there was demand for all of these new homes house prices would be under pressure but prices in Bradford have fallen in real terms over the last 8 years. Whilst home owners across England have seen an average increase in the value of their homes of 40%; price rises in Bradford have been limited to 8%. That is roughly a third of the rate of inflation.
As a result of this stagnation, the value of our homes has fallen from almost 30% below the national average to more than 45% below the national average. This is substantiated by a recent Lloyds Bank study which confirmed that Bradford has the lowest income to house price ratio of any city in England. This surely indicates that general demand for additional housing in Bradford is not there.
The forecasts that the council used when they set these housing development targets are outdated…the last main change to the plans was in 2015…
National government has undertaken a major consultation…this includes a formula for identifying housing needs. The formula indicates that Bradford’s current target is more than 32% higher than is needed. All of this evidence would suggest that our council should pause, listen to its people and review its targets.
Leeds, which has a much more buoyant property market, has done this and radically reducing its housing target as a result.
There may be an argument for an increase in social housing. If that is the case then we should have a strategy for social housing that doesn’t dilute the standard housing stock unnecessarily and further depress the wealth of our citizens as a result.
Bradfords citizens should all be asking:
1. Do we want open green space to enjoy?
2. Do we want our village identities to disappear and become zones of a city?
3. Do we need so many new houses?
4. Should the council review its approach to housing development?
Finally
Right on cue yet more madness illustrating the above – see here.
The T&A should have this issue on the front pages; instead they pay lip service in the process simply being complicit with the Council and the developers. Shame on them.
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