Blame Ide for America's problems

[mongers]

But the rural councils around it are doing everything they can to stop it - central government could step in to help Stevenage. This reluctance is probably worse because the Tories heartland are precisely the sort of councils most likely to object to any new building.

While true, it's not always quite as simple as "we don't want it here". The latest plan for my local town is generally opposed, but not just by the "not here" community. It's opposed because it on its own is an example of terrible planning, even compared to the previous plans.

My small town is built on a slope rising up out of the Ise Valley. The last two expansion plans have involved building houses at the top of the hill. The latest involves extending the town towards the Ise. The land in question is boggy already and basically beyond the point where the more locally planned developments of the Seventies and early Eighties stopped for good reason.

Concreting over a huge chunk of land where the water table's so high already is not a clever idea. It's even less clever when you remember the flooding issues that Northampton and other parts of the South of my County have had in the last decade. But because of the "we need more houses" mantra that's the vogue these days that's where they want to build them.

My town has no railway station (nor can it get one since it's on a 2 lane section of the Midland Main Line), few jobs (even before the last two rounds of expansion it was a commuter town), and limited leisure facilities (the leisure centre we had being closed down and replaced with a smaller facility in the new housing projects on top of the hill...the old one being in the same boggy area they now want to build houses on.) It's always puzzled me why they want to build more commuter houses while demonising car drivers.

As an aside and a sign that previous housing plans haven't been adequately thought out - ever since they built the new estates at the top of the hill the sewers at the other end of town lower down the slope have suffered overflow problems (presumably because sewers don't need expanding when a town does - OK, that's probably evidence-less paranoia, but since this is the same planning department that thinks a larger town needs a smaller leisure centre... )

Suffice it to say that the new plans are not entirely opposed due to a kneejerk reaction against anything new.

Anyway, we need to end the "house is good" mantra and start building more flats. We need to look more into why there are so many empty homes in the country (at least the ones empty for more than six months, less than that is just part of the buying/moving merry-go-round.) As Shielbh said, we need to improve the houses that are built, and not just in terms of their energy efficiency; modern housing estates are terrible, with weirdly curved streets substituting for individuality and style - living as I do on a street where the houses have been built up over time and are all different styles a modern housing estate looks as soul-destroying to me as the flats built in the Fifties and Sixties were supposed to be.

Ah, Desborough.

[Agelastus]

Ah, Desborough.

Yep...up to about 11000 people now and STILL only two pubs...

[mongers]

Ah, Desborough.

Yep...up to about 11000 people now and STILL only two pubs...

Damn, that is desperate.