Tories Plough Ahead On Green Belt Land

In a press release issued today the Hillingdon Labour Group has accused the Tory led Hillingdon Council of unnecessarily building on valuable Green Belt land when suitable brownfield sites in the Council's ownership are available.

 "After the Central & South Planning meeting on 5th March 2013 no one should be in any doubt that the Labour Group in Hillingdon believe that every child in Hillingdon deserves a decent school place and that where we differ from the Conservative administration is that we consider our parks, open spaces and common land to be priceless, whereas they consider them to be worthless.

 Petitioners, Ward Councillors and John McDonnell MP highlighted different aspects of why the Green Belt site of Lake Farm Country Park and Botwell Common should be protected from development.  There were strong arguments put forward that demonstrated that the additional school places required could be provided without the need to build a new school on this site, if the political will was there to do so.

 Objectors mentioned the proposals for a new 4 form of entry primary school at the nearby Guru Nanak Academy and a proposed new 2 form of entry primary school at Hewens College, but the committee did not take these into consideration.

Other suggestions that were offered up for consideration, and also turned down, were to allow Rosedale Primary school to expand and also to make use of the old Hayes swimming pool site that the Council is selling off to a property developer. 

So the decision to plough ahead with proposals to build on this piece of common land in the Green Belt comes down to a political decision made by the administration, based on the fact that they own the site, so the land will cost them nothing.

After the meeting Cllr Peter Curling, Leader of the Labour Group, said

 “As the meeting went on it became very clear that the additional primary school places equating to 3 forms of entry could be accommodated without the need to pour concrete over Lake Farm Country Park.

 We, in the Labour Group, fully sign up to ensuring that every child has a decent school place and tonight it was demonstrated that this could be achieved without the need to destroy Lake Farm, so the proposal to build a school there is clearly driven by a political decision, rather than educational need.

What we are seeing is a Tory administration cashing in on the sale of Brownfield sites and then building on Green Belt land within their ownership.  This is more to do with money than children's education, and it shows that the Tories consider open Green Belt land to be worthless, whereas we consider it to be priceless.”

Hillingdon Tories block limits on betting shops

Cllr Peter Curling

Labour Councillor Peter Curling writes “Once again, the Tory group in Hillingdon has proved that their marketing strap line of “Putting residents first” is precisely that, a marketing strapline, and one with absolutely no substance.

At the full Council meeting on Thursday 5^th July the Labour group tabled two motions, one asking the Cabinet to reconsider their decision to close three day centres for the disabled.  Not surprisingly the Tory group put their party whip before the residents and voted down that motion.

The other motion was for the Council to support the Government commissioned, Mary Portas  (otherwise known as Mary Queen of Shops) review of High streets and the High Steets First campaign led by Cllr Rowena Davis (Southwark Council) in their efforts to get planning law changed so that the council can control the number of betting shops in town centres.

Given our continued economic slump and an economy that has flat lined for the last 2 years, there is real concern that of betting shops on our high streets are exploiting people’s desperation for a way out of poverty, giving rise to payday loan companies and creating a trickle up movement of money moving from the poor to the rich.

Other boroughs and campaign groups are now working together to force a change in the law. Under current planning law betting shops are taking over vacant high street units with their existing A2 classification meaning they don't need any planning permission. This is because betting shops, according to Planning Law, are listed as “financial services”.

Labour Councillor Lynne Allen proposed the motion and made it absolutely clear that we are not against betting shops per se and that our concerns are centred on clusters of Bookies which are said to hamper work around regeneration by discouraging businesses from moving into the area and making it difficult to create a more diverse and vibrant high street.

Mary Portas made a recommendation in her review that would have changed the classification of betting shops and placed limits on their numbers.  ” campaign also calls for the government to change the law in order to give local communities a say over the number of betting shops in their area.

During the Mayoral election campaign Boris Johnson indicated his support for these campaigns by saying:

"We certainly should be making it easier for councils to block them (bookmakers) - they're not only spreading false hope, they're reducing the economic vitality of high streets. Bookmakers are a spiritual narcotic that breed false hope and it's a terrible thing to see."

It was therefore very sad to see the Tories speaking against the campaigns to curb the proliferation of betting shops and by doing so they actually started arguing that clusters of betting shops and the encouragement of gambling was a good thing. 

Rather than put the residents first in this debate, the Conservative group put their need to play pointless party political games in the Council chamber, before any commitment to the residents that they were elected to serve.