I don't want an eco-town in my constituency

Birmingham Post

Peter Luff, MP for Mid-Worcestershire, speaks out against eco towns.

I oppose the so-called eco-town proposed for the Worcestershire-Warwickshire borders because it will not be sustainable, it meets no local need and it will not even be ‘eco’.

What we need are eco-suburbs, attached to existing settlements, not remote new towns dumped in the middle of the countryside.

The proposed eco-town that most concerns me lies on the eastern-most part of my constituency – “Middle Quinton”.

There just isn’t the need for 6,000 new homes at this location. We need new homes, but many miles away, not here. (Incidentally, did no one even think to ask local people in Lower and Upper Quinton what they made of this irritating and disingenuous name? Why not call it what it is – Long Marston, an ex-army depot?)

The developer’s “Vision Document” is full of wonderful promises, but I doubt if they are remotely affordable. It’s interesting to note they are pursuing a parallel, more modest, conventional application for the same site. Surely this whole eco-town proposal isn’t just a negotiating strategy?

The small group of enthusiasts are quick to accuse their opponents of denying both the need to build more houses and the severe shortage of affordable housing. But all of us engaged in this issue agree we do need to build more homes to house an ageing population and a society that lives in smaller households. That doesn’t mean we should throw new towns up without looking at their long-term social, economic and environmental impact.

First, we must be certain that all the new houses we build are in the places where people actually need them.

Second, we must ensure that all new homes are environmentally sustainable and part of sustainable communities.

All the evidence suggests that most of the proposed eco-towns will meet neither of these crucial criteria. The whole idea was a hastily cobbled-together policy and is badly flawed. The Government is only still pursuing it because it wants to save face.

If they were serious, they would proceed with one or two pilots and not try to ride roughshod over informed nation and local opinion in so many places.

Eco-towns are all about spin. They are a gimmick, dressed up in an environmental cloak. With the dangers of climate change high on the agenda, if the word “eco” is put in front of anything, it makes it unassailable – at least that is the theory.

If a new town is to be a genuine eco-town and if it is not to put a burden on the wider infrastructure of its area, then it must be as self-sustaining as possible. So if half the houses are to be affordable, then half the jobs provided in the town must be “affordable” too. Otherwise the people living in those affordable homes will just get in their cars and drive to work.

Suppose the town was built and people actually moved in, where are the jobs going to come from to support 10-20,000 new residents in the area? The nearby small towns of Evesham and Stratford-upon-Avon can hardly be expected to provide jobs for such a growth in the workforce. Instead, residents would have to commute to jobs in the wider area– to Worcester, Warwick, Redditch, Cheltenham, Coventry and Birmingham – and they will have to drive. More cars on the roads mean more carbon dioxide emissions and more pollution. What’s “eco” about that?

Don’t just take it from me – the Conservative MP for part of a potential site. Sian Berry – former Green Party co-leader and London Mayoral candidate, has said: “Building brand new eco-towns … is a really bad idea. When there are 700,000 homes in England alone sitting empty, all ripe for refitting with green technologies…plonking a load of new houses out in the countryside, even if you do used previously developed sites such as old military bases is just wrong.

“Despite the pretty eco-rhetoric, I just don’t have faith that this scheme will actually be good for the planet”.

And what about the human cost? The Government has given scant regard to the residents of these wretched places. People in need of affordable homes want to find them near their friends and families. Under these proposals they will be ripped from their social networks and dumped in what will surely become a rural ghetto. These are real people and should not be used as pawns in a social experiment.

Even if these towns have their own local infrastructure, they will put huge demands on the wider infrastructure of their area,— on the roads, the railways, the hospitals, the police force, the fire services, waste management, water and sewage systems and even power supplies.

Precisely because eco-towns can’t exist in a vacuum, they will have a big impact on the current residents of an area. Even if they prove to be sustainable in their own right, what impact will they have on the quality of life of people already living locally? The sad thing is eco-towns were nearly a brilliant idea. The Government should have suggested developing them as suburbs of large towns where jobs, infrastructure and social networks already exist. Then they could be connected with excellent public transport links to and from the town centre. Thoughtful people would have welcomed that. Similar schemes have been adopted with great success abroad. The Government even refers to one such suburb at Vauban, on the edge of Freiberg in Germany, in their consultation document.

What infuriates me is that the under house-building plans Worcester, the city will be getting a lot more houses on its edge, at two locations including one of around 3,000 in my constituency. Why not make these eco-suburbs? There is a real opportunity there for some innovative and environmentally friendly developments which might succeed.

Instead the Government continues with this obsession of dumping new towns in the wrong places. The consequences for us all – and especially for the residents themselves – will be serious.

Simon Jenkins, the new chairman of the National Trust, put it best, just a few days after the ‘eco-town’ proposals were first unveiled, when he called them “the greatest try-on in the long and dazzling history of property speculation”. And so they are.