The Government has decided that 100,000 new homes should be built in the South West of England by 2026. South Wiltshire, the area around the city of Salisbury, has been instructed to find room for 12,400 of these new houses. South Wiltshire is only one twentieth of the land mass of the South West but has been allocated one eighth of the proposed new homes. No additional money will come from the Government for roads, schools or hospitals. The plans include a target for new jobs – but this appears to be based on pious hopes rather than reality.
Salisbury District Council appears to think that resistance is futile.
A quote from the Salisbury Journal of 17th April 2008
‘Salisbury Council has issued a statement warning that failure to meet nationally imposed deadlines for completing the consultation process (on the new development) would make a bad situation worse….. Put bluntly, decisions about where development takes place would be taken out of our hands. Housing and job numbers for South Wiltshire will be set by the government and developers, and local people will have not say in how and where this happens.’
Through rising levels of fury I began to wonder how our democratic rights had been suspended. This blog, written by someone who has always found local politics mind numbing, will explore and try to explain in plain English, how this very strange situation has come about.
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