Housing and the Green Belt - letter to Oxford Mail (Oxford West and Abingdon Liberal Democrats)

Oxford West and Abingdon Liberal Democrats <info@oxwablibdems.org.uk>

Housing and the Green Belt - letter to Oxford Mail

July 29, 2006 12:00 AM

My family, like thousands of others who work in the city, know from their personal experience that finding somewhere to live that they can afford is impossible unless they earn well above the average wage and have more than one earner in the family. At least my family have somewhere to live and can commute daily into the city to work unlike the almost 1,000 homeless families who are in temporary accommodation and the even more thousands who are on the city council's waiting list for housing with little, if any, hope of getting a home of their own within years.

Surely it is "blindingly obvious", to use an expression used in one of your editorials recently, that the Green Belt has to be reviewed so that a decision can be made on where the needed thousands of homes for people in the city should be built in the locations that will most reduce the need to travel. It is simply not possible to cram all these needed homes within the existing city boundaries: the city is already accepting much higher densities but we are already on the limit of what can be done in this direction.

So where are the homes to be built and who will take the decision? Do we really want to leave this matter, which will shape our communities for a generation or more, to be take n by Ruth Kelly and her civil servants without us making our solutions and the arguments to support them known? Would it not be more constructive to take responsibility for own own future and for all the local authorities concerned - this means all 5 District Councils and the County Council - to get together and to hold an evidence based inquiry into the most sustainable locations for the homes the county needs over the next generation? Then in the light of that review we could persuade Ruth Kelly and her department that we know best how to meet our housing needs.

At a recent meeting of the leaders of the 5 districts and the county I suggested just that sort of constructive and co-operative approach. I have not given up hope of a positive response as the realisation grows that sticking heads in the sand will not avoid a decision being imposed on us if we have not first come up with our own viable approach.

The choice is not between Green Belt or houses. If we apply our minds we can preserve a viable Green Belt for another generation and make a serious and sustainable improvement in the county-wide issue of housing shortage.

John Goddard

Leader of Oxford City Council