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.

Responses to Letter: New Developments Should Benefit Local People

Nigel Keane Reply

October 22, 2024 at 1:12 pm

It is obvious that major developers must be kept away, they tend to build ugly houses for pure profit. They are then found to have serious snagging problems. (I am thinking of one new build estate within the GBC area where a new drainage system sends sewage soiled water down a slope to the front doors in periods of heavy rainfall).

Promises are made about infrastructure which is then conveniently found to be too expensive for them to actually build once they have completed all the houses. They should be required to build infrastructure first before housing.

I see no reason why council housing should not be built as a priority with genuinely affordable homes. There should be no tower blocks looking like Stasi prisons, instead individual low housing, as was the case a few years ago.

I lived in a Victorian two-up two-down terraced cottage built in the 1880s for Lavender Farm workers. I had a decent garden to grow crops and also sit outside in the warmer months. Small developments on brownfield sites would be suitable with no need to steal green belt land for vanity projects.