Councillor condemns decision to impose house building on Burbage

PRESS RELEASE reference Recovered Planning Appeal: Sketchley House (Chapels Drive / Welbeck Ave. Development).

Burbage Councillor John Moore regrets the decision made by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in allowing the appeal that will result in additional housing being inflicted on Burbage.

The Conservative Minister Eric Pickles has issued his decision to allow a planning application for 130 plus dwellings in Burbage. He has personally overridden, from his remote office in London, the views and wishes of local residents and Hinckley Borough Councillors who had rejected the plan outright.

This is the same Minister who proudly fronted the policy of "Localism", the policy that promised to put the power for determining issues that clearly had major implications for local people, firmly in the hands of local residents. We now know with complete clarity that what was written on the tin clearly is not a representation of its contents. This is the same Eric Pickles who insists that all planning decisions should be based on sound evidence, but felt able to make a decision having never visited the area or viewed the landscape that will be destroyed forever by this decision. One certainty is that he will not have to suffer the problems that his decision has inflicted upon the residents of the Ward I represent.

This decision will lead to the destruction of a much loved landscape amenity. It will impose significant levels of additional traffic on a national and local road network that has been starved of investment for years. It will provide housing that serves only to encourage economic migration from the high cost housing cities of Birmingham, Coventry and Leicester. It will fail to bring any economic benefits to our community as these families will continue to satisfy their needs in the area in which they are employed.

This Government should, as a matter of urgency, hand such crucial decisions back to local people and locally elected Councillors instead of imposing remote decisions on our community.