Martin Tod

Thank you to everyone who gave so generously to members of the Lib Dem Sleep Out team (or anyone else!) as part of the Big Sleep Out.

Thanks to your generosity the Lib Dem team has so far raised more than £3,800 towards the Nightshelter and the Trinity Centre!  

We almost all got rather heavily rained on and didn’t sleep too well from around 3 a.m. onwards, but it was great to be part of such a well-organised and successful fundraising event for such a good cause. And, after all, no matter how wet we got, sleeping out on one damp night in May is nothing like having to do it through the winter or for weeks or months on end. We all knew we had dry homes and beds to go home to afterwards. The important thing was that we raised as much money as possible to help people who don’t have that choice.

Earlier in the evening, there were an excellent series of talks and speeches moderated by Debbie Thrower, who also read a very thought-provoking text on her own account (which I unfortunately didn’t note the source down for).  It was particularly moving hearing from people like Ed Mitchell who had been rough sleepers, how charities like the Winchester Churches Nightshelter and the Trinity Centre had helped them get their lives back on track.  (You can buy Ed Mitchell’s book here if you would like to know more).

There are some good pictures and reports on the Sleep Out at the main Big Sleep Out website.  If you’re interested, you can also read the live Twitter reports of the evening.

Even though the evening is over, it remains an urgent cause and both charities are very stretched by high demand. 60 people a month are turned away by the Night Shelter due to lack of space. On average, 20 of the 50 people who use the Trinity Centre report that they slept rough the night before.

If you’d like to donate to the Big Sleep Out by sponsoring the Lib Dem team, you can do so at http://www.justgiving.com/martintod. You can also give directly without sponsoring anyone. Either way, every penny you give (plus Gift Aid) goes straight to the two charities and will help make a real difference.

There’s a big problem with the Winchester City Council survey which they’ve used to conclude that people locally want step-change growth or to build on Barton Farm.

The problem is that their survey doesn’t include enough people from the city itself. As a consequence, the results are totally misleading.

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I’m surprised that the Chamber of Commerce and George Beckett are so negative about the impact of the move of the Police Headquarters from Winchester to Chandler’s Ford.

This is not the same as a big local business going bust or moving to the other end of the country. No-one’s losing their job. No families will see a big drop in income. The jobs aren’t disappearing. They’re moving seven miles down the road to Chandler’s Ford. No local families will be forced to move away from Winchester and there will be no reduction in the number of police officers working out of North Walls.

People also spend most money where they live, not where they work, so the extra houses in the town centre are likely to help local business, not hurt it.

Looking at Winchester as a whole, one of our biggest problems is lack of housing, particularly affordable and social housing, rather than lack of jobs. Every day, 18,000 people commute into Winchester and 8,600 people commute out. Thousands of families are on the waiting list for social housing. The move will help address that imbalance, reduce commuting and help Winchester house more local people.

Importantly, we will get these extra houses, which count towards government targets, without being forced to build on green fields.

Some businesses will be hurt by fewer people popping out to shop at lunchtime, but more will be helped by 294 more families living and shopping in the heart of Winchester. Overall, this move should be good for local business, good for local people and good for the local environment.

One piece of good news today.  The Government has made it clear that Micheldever Station is not going to be one of its new eco-towns.

I’m really pleased.  This was an eco-town proposal that wasn’t eco.  It was going to have an appalling effect on traffic congestion and emissions.  It was going to concrete over the countryside – rather than using brown field land as per the original specification.

In essence, it was a half-baked greenwash of a bad idea that had previously been repeatedly rejected.

Most of the credit for this belongs with the Dever Society and particularly their very impressive vice-chair, Tessa Robertson, who got a big round of applause today at the celebration meeting (or, more accurately, celebration walk across some fields that were threatened with being concreted over).

There was also huge public opposition.  The online petition against the proposed Micheldever Station eco-town got more support than any of the other petitions around the country opposing local eco-towns.

The Dever Society is intending to continue campaigning until Zurich Insurance and Eagle Star give up on their plans.  I certainly intend to keep doing what I can to support them. They need members and support: the more the better.  If you’d like to join, the membership form is here.

I went to the annual general meeting of the Dever Society last night. Steve Tilbury, the Head of Operations at Winchester City Council was there and made an excellent and informative presentation. As part of it, he referenced an article by David Blackman and Joey Gardiner in Building magazine – which accurately captures the general mood locally about the Micheldever Station Eco-Town:

The list of sites put forward by developers reads like a greatest hits of planning applications gone by. The communities department refuses to publish the list, but an investigation by Building has uncovered nine, all of which bring on a sense of deja vu. Micheldever, for example, the proposed site of a 12,500-home town, was put forward to two Hampshire structure plan inquiries in the late nineties, before being rejected in 2000 …

It looks like developers and councils have leaped at the chance to build on sites that have lain fallow for decades, dusting off old schemes, tarting them up with low-carbon jargon and bolting on eco-bling. Conservation groups on the other hand, are horrified.

Elsewhere in Building magazine, Mark Brinkley confirms the traffic concerns I posted about earlier this month (from a position of considerably greater expertise!) ; in particular, he highlights the consequences of the Government’s requirement that “Eco-towns must be new settlements – separate and distinct from existing towns but well linked to them”:

Why throw that into the mix? What is remotely eco about it? In terms of transportation, building away from existing urban centres is very bad news. It requires much more infrastructure and adds to travel and commuting times. Why abandon the policy thrusts towards urban extensions and regenerating brownfield?

The CPRE has also come out against the proposal. My friend, and former neighbour at University, Tom Oliver, is now their head of rural policy and was quoted in this Independent article which summarises many of the arguments against the Micheldever proposals (although is a bit light on the transport issues).

Tom Oliver, the head of countryside policy for the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said such a new town “would overshadow a huge swathe of rural Hampshire”. He added: “The site has been rejected repeatedly as a possible major new development and has only returned as a figment of corporate opportunism. To decorate this proposal with ‘eco-bling’ is cynical and undermines the credibility of the Government’s eco-towns competition.”

One final tidbit. The news broke today that Tony Blair has been signed up by Zurich – the parent company of the Micheldever development – as an environmental advisor. Given Blair’s record on the environment, I’m tempted to repeat Tom Lehrer’s reaction when he heard that Kissinger had won the Nobel peace prize.

Because Eagle Star’s plan to trash the environment and increase the Winchester district’s carbon footprint will likely make them north of £1 billion were they to get the go-ahead, there’s plenty of money in this project (at least on their side) for endless consultancy (possibly including Blair) to try and push the project through – even if they assume a very low chance of success. Although the Dever Society has done a great job of fundraising, Eagle Star is an incredibly expensive company to take on, so if you feel like becoming a friend of the Dever Society in order to support their opposition to the proposals, the membership form is here. If you haven’t already signed the petition against the Micheldever development, you can do so here.

PS: I particularly like the term ‘eco-bling’ used by Tom and in the Building magazine article. In the US last week, I heard another new eco-term for the first time: ‘green-collar worker’. When I contacted Tom after reading his quotes in the Independent article, I emailed to ask (among other things) if he was one. He answered happily to the lunch I suggested in the email, but, to date, is strangely silent on the ‘green collar’ issue.

After all our previous efforts, the council has finally moved the Winchester consultation meeting for the Local Development Framework to the Guildhall.

This means that there now spaces available on January 17th.

As mentioned previously, this is a hugely important paper for the future of the Winchester area setting out the strategy for major change across the District over the next twenty years – particularly in terms of planning and housing. It’s essential that anyone who is interested should be able to get a place in one of the consultation meetings.

There’s been an incredible level of interest. The meetings in Alresford, Winchester and Wickham have had to be moved to larger buildings and a new meeting has been set up in Littleton.

You can book a place at any of the remaining meetings via this online form.

After all our pressure back in December, the good news is that there is now going to be an extra consultation workshop for the City Council’s Local Development Framework in Littleton Village Hall.

But the two other consultations in the new Winchester Constituency – in Alresford and Winchester’s Discovery Centre are already fully booked out – with 9 or more days to go before the meeting itself.

We still need at least one more consultation in the City itself. The Local Development Framework, while sounding boring, has huge implications for our city over the next 20 years.

As I said back in December:

The proposals on the table (including an effective assumption in favour of developing on Barton Farm, Abbots Barton and Pitt Manor, and including possible further expansion north and east of the current Barton Farm site, on Teg Down, on Bushfield Camp and further into Pitt Manor Farm) are going to be hugely controversial across the city and also have a potentially huge impact in areas outside the city, such as Oliver’s Battery, Badger Farm, Kings Worthy and Compton.

We urgently need more consultation meetings to ensure that local people’s voices are properly heard.

The Dever Society has launched an online petition against the proposed Micheldever Station Eco-Town.

Despite the Town’s supposed environmental credentials, I’m also opposed and have signed the petition, primarily because the Town’s environmental credentials are a sham: the proposal is not environmental at all. By creating a new transport node equidistant between Basingstoke, Andover and Winchester, the new town will create a huge amount of extra journeys. As and when we require further housing, our priority needs to supporting sustainable lifestyles in our existing town centres – this plan does the exact opposite.

One element that takes a while to sink in is how completely enormous the proposed town is. Eagle Star (the owner) are proposing to have 12,500 new houses and close to 30,000 residents.

When I hear the word ‘market town’ in this part of the world, I tend to think of Alresford, Whitchurch or Wickham – but this proposal is bigger than Alresford, Whitchurch and Wickham added together! Compared to the 12,500 houses proposed for Micheldever Station, there are 2,300 houses in the town of New Alresford – around the same number in the town of Whitchurch, slightly fewer in Wickham and only 14,500 in the town wards of the city of Winchester. This is an absolutely huge development.

It’s important that as many people as possible sign up to back the petition. Anyone can sign up – details are at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Micheldever/.

If you need to know more, the Dever Society has a very useful briefing, and extracts from the speech I made at their public meeting in Micheldever Station are below.

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The City Council has announced their consultation plans for Winchester City Council’s Local Development Framework.

This is a hugely important paper for the future of the Winchester area. To quote the paper itself, it covers:

what need(s) to change across the District over the next twenty years

and covers:

• The broad location and balance of development across the authority’s area,
• Management of the housing supply,
• The balance between employment and housing
• The delivery of affordable housing

Despite the critical importance of this strategy, it is currently proposed to have only two consultation meetings in the new Winchester constituency – one in Alresford and one in the new Discovery Centre. And the one in the Discovery Centre is in a room that contains fewer than 180 people (or 120 people if it’s organised for a workshop as planned).

The proposed consultation in Alresford makes sense, but the proposed consultation for the rest of the area around the city of Winchester is completely inadequate.

For perspective, over 450 people turned up to discuss the Tower Arts Centre in the Guildhall and over 200 people turned up to Littleton Village Hall to discuss the closure of their post office. Over 100 people turned up to discuss the Oliver’s Battery village design statement!

The proposals on the table (including an effective assumption in favour of developing on Barton Farm, Abbots Barton and Pitt Manor, and including possible further expansion north and east of the current Barton Farm site, on Teg Down, on Bushfield Camp and further into Pitt Manor Farm) are going to be hugely controversial across the city and also have a potentially huge impact in areas outside the city, such as Oliver’s Battery, Badger Farm, Kings Worthy and Compton.

There’s also a problem that not every option has been properly examined. Some villages are asking for faster expansion than proposed in the paper so that they can continue to support their local school. And important issues such as the Micheldever ‘eco-town’ are not being given the scrutiny they deserve.

In light of this, the proposal to have a single meeting in the Winchester area, in a room that holds 120 people, to discuss the future of the Winchester area over the next 20 years, is a total joke.

I was going along Bodycoats Road in Chandler’s Ford today when I had a sudden attack of déjà vu. I was sure I had been there before.

It couldn’t have been from the 2005 election, since most of our work in Romsey during the 2005 General Election was in Palestine, up in the north of the constituency, and in Romsey itself.

It then struck me that it must have been from the by-election in 2000, since on one Sunday a team I’d brought from Ealing Acton & Shepherds Bush was sent out to Chandler’s Ford. This was confirmed when I visited someone who I remembered canvassing!

My main memory of the Romsey by-election (aside from the result) was being so infuriated by William Hague’s speech about asylum speakers shortly before the election that the next morning, I called my boss, booked a day’s holiday for election day and then, on election day, went and pounded the streets until the polls closed.

As in Winchester, several of the people I met in Chandler’s Ford mentioned planning as an issue. On the one hand, young families who were born and grew up in the area are forced out by high house prices. Many couples who now live outside the area bring their children back to be christened in St Boniface because they still feel that Chandler’s Ford is home. On the other, no-one wants to see over-development and too much stress put on local services and infrastructure. As is so often the case, Government centralisation has a lot to do with the frustration that people feel in this area. Councillors are too often forced to act as an arm of government, rather than advocates of their local area. Everyone locally, including local councillors, ends up feeling that no-one is listening. Pushing true and full decision-making down to a more local level has to be the way forward to help release this tension.

Finally to the US elections. It all seems very much as the Democrats were predicting when I went to meet them back in June. My brother has just taken American citizenship and lives in the marginal state of Virginia, where they appear to be having the closest senate race. If the Democrats win Virginia by one vote, I will be very proud.