13/04/2023
One of Labour's candidates for the Heanor West & Loscoe ward (who lives in Ripley, hence the withholding of his address on the ballot slip) has been sharing blatant lies about a proposed housing development in Loscoe.
The Lies:
1. Conservative Councillors gave planning permission for 500 new houses to be built off of Taylor Lane and Greenacre Avenue.
2. This was done with no regard for GP surgeries or dentists.
3. No additional school placements have been allowed for.
4. No easy access to public transport.
5. No consideration for increase in traffic on unsuitable roads.
The Truth (see image in comments showing the exact numbers):
1. No, they didn't. Outline Planning Permission is a vastly different beast to actual Planning Permission. Essentially, the decision reached at this meeting was indicative that the Council is open to the development, subject to a full planning application being submitted complete with extensive funding agreements, detailed below. 500 is also the maximum number of houses the developer wished to be considered, with comments made in the meeting that if the application was successful that the number of houses would actually be around 350.
2. £190,200 of Section 106 money would be paid to the local area towards Health.
3. This one is the most absurd lie. Were the development to go ahead, Heanor Gate Science College and Loscoe Primary School would receive £1.1m and £706k, respectively, to cover infrastructure improvements necessary to accommodate the extra pupils.
4. Taylor Lane has bus stops mere yards away from its junction with the A6007. At the other end of the proposed development (Greenacre Avenue) is the Trent Barton bus garage, with bus stops outside it on each side of the A608.
5. Within the Section 106 funding plans allowances have been made for junction improvements.
As a resident of the ward who uses these roads every day, I appreciate that any housing development is never without controversy. As a father of two young children, however, I also appreciate that we need to build houses for our children. And as a fond advocate of local economies, I believe we need to expand our housing provision to bring people into the area to enable and boost local economic expansion.
Balancing these concerns means that as a local councillor I ensured that the development appropriately compensated the local area for any infrastructure improvements required to accommodate such a large number of houses. I believe that the funding detailed in the image in the comments appropriately compensates the local area, to the tune of £3.22m total.
Labour set aside £1.2m for a Local Plan in 2019 and pledged to deliver it by 2021. That didn't happen, and despite repeatedly being asked they are yet to state where they would choose to build houses across the Borough, despite a national Labour Party pledge to build 100,000 Council houses every year.
If you have any concerns about this development, or others across the Borough, please don't hesitate to contact me or my serving colleagues for more information. After all, that's why we're here.
Cheers,
Dale
Cllr Dale Wright
Heanor & Loscoe Ward
