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Housing & MKSM |
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MKSM (Milton Keynes and South Midlands Sub-Regional Strategy)
Background (see table of proposed housing numbers)
Where are the Jobs coming from? Knowledge/science based industries or the expansion of Luton airport
End of Local Democracy Previously, councillors would make decisions about the whole planning for the county. Now all the planning laws have changed. When the Regional Strategy, which includes housing numbers, is agreed by the regional assemblies and national government, then the council will be allowed to decide exactly where to put the housing. All that is left to our local representatives to do is to work out the small details of plans decided by others who have no local accountability. The Councils have the power to draw up these local plans called Local Delivery Documents which will form part of Local Delivery Frameworks.
However, they will not be deciding the planning applications from the developers. New bodies will be set up called Local Delivery vehicles, one form of which is an urban development corporation which consists of a minority of councillors and the rest will be developers, business men, management from the NHS and one community/voluntary representative. They will be appointed by government and will not be accountable. They have powers of compulsory purchase and are so powerful that they can only be created by an act of Parliament. They do not legally have to follow the plans drawn up by the councils when they decide planning applications. The only way that they can be challenged is through the Courts via Judicial review which is incredibly expensive.
The best example of this is the London Docklands Development Corporation. The views and needs of the local community were totally overlooked in favour of developers building expensive flats for people working in the city. At present they are looking at one Local Delivery to cover from Aylesbury Vale (to the west of Linslade) Leighton Buzzard, Dunstable, Luton, Houghton Regis, and North Hertfordshire. The councils are asking for this as it will be difficult to administer across so many authorities but they are totally giving up their powers. We could easily end up with one Local Delivery Vehicle, an urban development corporation, to cover this whole area. So there could be a board of 10 people with only 3 or 4 councillors and one community representative - the rest appointed by John Prescott to determine the future of this huge area and they have no accountability to us at all!
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