Dick chaired the meeting of the seven Nairnshire Community Councils last night and opened with his thoughts on many of the problems facing the area at the moment and how we could best look for sustainable solutions based on the traditional resources of the area. The planning system featured heavily in his intro. He said: " We tend to be sucked
into development proposals, we spend a lot of time and effort in responding to
planning applications and a lot of our responses are perhaps ignored. We never
really feel very satisfied with the outcome or very rarely."
Nairn South, housing development, the A96 and the bypass featured in Dick's opening statement and he also pointed out: "A lot of these houses
which developers are going to be putting up are not going to be affordable for
a lot of people in this area. So we really have to think about housing which is
appropriate for the people that are on waiting lists. It’s back to front with
what Highland Council are proposing and developers."
Dick described a scenario where the local authority was running out of money and he felt that "nothing much was going to happen unless we boot it up with development companies that we have control over."
"Locality Planning" was the theme of the meeting and here Dick shares the radical ideas of Alistair Noble. There is a massive body of support building up behind this school of thought in Nairn. The test bed for such a development model will be the former Social Work Buildings in the town centre. If NICE succeeds there it will be game on for a whole series of initiatives that citizens can create and control for themselves.
More quotes from the meeting over the next few days.
I would echo Dick's words about getting sucked into development proposals. It would seem they all get passed in the end with what I can only assume is the feeling that something is better than nothing.
ReplyDeleteFrom a developers point of view it's all about money. How many properties they can squeeze in, or give them a little more space and call them executive homes at inflated prices
But society has changed in the last couple of decades. We have many more single people who require homes, and through no fault of their own will probably never be able to get onto the current property ladder with just one income for a mortgage. As a first time buyer you're going to need an income of £30K to afford the cheapest flat available in Nairn, and how many people have that sort of income
Time for developers and councils to rethink what they are going to offer. Are we happy to see most social housing being provided by private landlords?