Tuesday, 7 February 2012

The Queen's College Hates Hedge End Countryside

Oxford Institution Wants to Build on Our Fields
With no fewer than ten comments on the draft local plan, The Queen's College is showing more interest in the future of Hedge End than many of our elected town councillors.  Clearly worried that the value of their own land holdings will go down if they are excluded from the development, most of their comments can be paraphrased as "build on our land, not Boorley Green", or "build on our land, not Chestnut Avenue". 

Desperate to get their land north of Hedge End included in the Lib Dem plans for almost 4,000 houses in Hedge End and Botley, they are even opposing the principle of gaps between our settlements and insist that the proposed countryside policy is "unnecessary".

The Queen's College is a wealthy institution that can call on and pay for all sorts of planning consultants and lawyers to defend its interests.  Ordinary people (the overwhelming majority of whom have opposed the Lib Dem's plans for large scale development in our area) rely on our local councils to stand up against these vested interests.  That is why Hedge End Town Council were guilty of dereliction of duty in refusing to debate and agree a response to the draft plan.  Just about every other parish council in the area has commented, but there is nothing from Hedge End.


The message given is that with two notable exceptions, the Lib Dems on the Town Council do not care what happens to Hedge End, and the wealthy landowners and developers are encouraged to bulldoze ahead with their plans to concrete over our green fields.

When will the Lib Dems keep their election promise to stand up for our area against more building and traffic?








The Queen's College Photo credit : James
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3 comments:

  1. Vocal Local9 February 2012 at 10:22

    Any chance of letting us know who the Councillor notable exceptions are, Hedge End Blogger? It would be good to learn which Councillors are prepared to actually represent the views of Hedge Enders and those which don't care and probably don't even live in Hedge End. As for Queen's College - how dare they comment. If there is a money incentive for these Queen's College people - shouldn't they DECLARE AN INTEREST?

    I am puzzled. Aren't Councillors elected to represent the interests of their Electorate? From the above, it seems they can't be bothered or they have been told not to vote against it. Perhaps the Leader of the Council has issued a three line whip. With the power all in one party's hand (Lib Dem in this case), we get neither democracy or fair representation. Extremely disturbing.

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  2. Keith Day14 February 2012 at 09:43

    I plan to blog some more on this, but if anybody wants to see what their town councillors have said, the summary details of responses to the draft local plan processed so far are on the council's web site: http://www.eastleigh.gov.uk/planning--building-control/planning-policy--design/draft-local-plan.aspx

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  3. Vocal Local16 February 2012 at 09:28

    Having scrolled through the lengthy responses to the draft plan, the only Councillors I could find who objected to yet more building in over-developed Hedge End were Cllrs Keith Day and Sheila Baines. Thanks goes to them for representing me. Hugely surprising is Cllr Cynthia Garton supported further development in this already over crowded area but then her partner is a Borough Councillor so draw your own conclusions. At least she bothered to respond, which means 18 of our worthy Town Councillors didn't! Shame on them.

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