Last time the Council went to consultation less than 300 people in the District responded to this critical document that will define the next twenty years.   Councillors have not ‘approved’ these plans they have approved sending them out to the public for consultation. This really is your last chance. 

The plans propose to seal existing villages within their own boundaries. There will be no more natural gradual development of villages by adding a ‘close’ here and there on the edge of a village. There will be little opportunity for new jobs and shops in the countryside in villages defined as secondary villages, while Red Lodge faces being swamped with new housing. One third of Forest Heath residents live in the countryside but we can expect no matching jobs growth in these areas, which in practice is likely on past performance to be no more than less than 1 percent per annum.      If these plans and policies are endorsed by public inaction, Council planners, particularly central government planners and the Government Inspectorate won’t recognise the countryside as a sustainable working environment, and only concerted public action will preserve the rights of families to continue living generation by generation in their home villages. These plans will price housing in the countryside even further out of the reach housing for farm workers, public service workers, and others not earning high salaries who work in the countryside.   It will enforce environmentally damaging unsustainable travel across the district by blocking new jobs in the countryside, while making worse the congestion pollution in the towns.

Over the months I have been on the council, regularly we are told black is white, standing orders don’t mean what they say and that the Council is great.

Last night most of the Tories and the Independent (who always votes with the Tories) refused to protect one of the oldest trees in Lakenheath because that would  increase bureaucracy for the farmer/developer who they are sure wont harm it and if a tree preservation order was applied would no longer care for it!  Credit must go to Cllr Bill Bishop for opposing this decision, 1 of just 2 Tories to do so.

To me it shows that they only care for the environment when it suits them.  This decision was just indicative of that. 

At the end of a long planning meeting.  We were told that we were going to be briefed on 2 issues.  The man from the press was duly ejected by the officers as apparently it was no longer a meeting.

We were then given a report on how Conservative controlled Forest Heath has allowed a 10 metre eyesore mast to go up on Exning Road by the Leisure Centre because they forgot to determine the application in time.  The mast is sighted I believe on Conservative Controlled Suffolk County Council land. 

However apart from huff and puff all we can do is put pressure on  O2 to remove their mast apparently (great guidance I must say).   I certainly hope we can do more than that.   Pressure must be put on the landowners - I believe the county to make sure the mast is removed and procedures must be tightened this doesn’t happen again.