Letter: New Developments Should Benefit Local People

Published on: 21 Oct, 2024
Updated on: 21 Oct, 2024

From: John Redpath

Former R4GV borough councillor

In response to: The Future is Congested, the Future is Grey

Well done Martin Giles for laying bare the issues of housing and being brave enough to also mention immigration, a subject that can often hang politicians if not approached carefully.

As a country, we should never make the mistake that Japan has made with an almost total ban on immigration, a country where houses (akiyas) are often given away for next to nothing due to the country’s falling population resulting in many villages that are dying. That approach is too extreme.

Having settled in Guildford town centre more than 35 years ago now, it’s fantastic that my children were born here and most still live nearby, but for how long? There is savage competition for every house that comes on the market in Guildford and quite often that competition is from people relocating to the UK from abroad.

These are not the refugees or boat people that we are all too familiar with, God help them, but wealthy foreigners who have paid for their visas in order to prove to the Government that they won’t be a burden on our economy and, indeed, may well boost it. That’s great, but what does that do for our children, who want to stay in a community close to their family and the friends they went to school with and grew up with?

Building more houses in the South East will only attract more and more people from other parts of the UK and abroad to come and live here. In the same way, adding more carriageways to the M25 has never solved its congestion problems.

If we are to be bullied by this Labour government into giving up yet more green (or “grey”) belt land then it’s desperately important that what we build will be used wisely with dense, but not too dense, housing that is built to last and is of good quality and design.

This is something which is currently lacking in many of the houses flying up around the borough today. With the new housing numbers foisted upon us, the Dragon editor correctly predicts that we will lose yet more green belt land to development, so it’s important that the developers, as a priority, are made to use every valuable inch of that land to the benefit of local residents and their families first.