Thursday 19 September 2013

NIMBYs Of The Week

Via Khards at HPC, from The Leamington Observer:

PROTESTERS in Southam have a "very good chance" of blocking the Holy Well housing development, according to town MP Jeremy Wright.

Mr Wright joined residents for a 'protest picnic' on the the field adjacent to the historic monument where Redrow Homes hope to build up to 85 homes.

Despite heavy rain, dozens turned out to show their support for the Save Holywell field campaign on Friday (August 16). At the gathering, Mr Wright said: "This is about setting and landscape. Make no mistake about it, if permission is given to build on this field, then these other fields around will also be in danger.

"An important part of Southam’s heritage, a place where people love to walk and sit by the river will be spoiled forever. I think we have got a very good chance of defending this land, but this protest is just the start.”


OK, here's that field marked on a map. The bits coloured green are fields (they go on for ever to the south) and the bit coloured grey labelled "Coventry" is the nearest large city:

7 comments:

Kj said...

Being all rational about it doesn´t work. The point is that it´s the view from their window, or the fields right outside their house that might be affected. Doesn´t matter if there´s an ocean of fields behind the new development. It can never go away, because they have a house now, end of.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Kj, yes, I fully agree.

So when they build the new houses which have "stolen" the nice view, they should offer to sell them to the people whose view has been stolen.

The people who like a view can move three hundred metres to the new houses with a view, and the building company then sells the old houses instead.

Oh... there is no need for such a silly complicated system. The people who already own houses in that village are free to sell their own houses on the market and then buy a new one anyway. That way they make a small profit or loss and keep the lovely view.

Bayard said...

"OK, here's that field marked on a map"

What you've marked appears to be Holywell Garage. If you want the actual Holy Well, search for Holywell Road and extend it, like Redrow are proposing across the field and the well is in the little rectangular enclosure to the west.
This article is a classic, with both sides spouting the usual bollocks. I guess that the field concerned is the brown one between the houses and the well, in which case it's not "a place where people love to walk and sit by the river", that's the next field down, the long, thin one, which is probably being left untouched, because a) it's right by the river and therefore liable to flood and b) leaving it enhances the value of the new houses.

Woodsy42 said...

Putting houses by the river doesn't sound wonderfully clever to me.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, the field is round there somewhere, I don't think it matters exactly where.

W42, B is the expert, he says they won't build housing near the river (and let us hope he is correct).

Tim Almond said...

Bayard,

That's the trick that the homeys always pull. They always try to make out that any development is like knocking down the hanging gardens of Babylon.

In Swindon, they came up with the term "Front Garden" to mean "the empty fallow fields next to the M4".

And in reality, of course councils don't actually build on fields of orchids or whatever, because even non-homeys want those protecting. And it's not like there's a shortage of fields in most places.

Bayard said...

"I don't think it matters exactly where."

Yes it does, it took me bloody ages to find it.

"he says they won't build housing near the river (and let us hope he is correct)"

Well there's no underestimating the power of incompetence, but since those floods of a few years back, I would have thought that most potential buyers know that insurance companies don't like houses next to streams and rivers and I would have thought that Redrow know this too.