Aston Martin and greenbelt land

[TheOstrich]

On the Ostrich's footie blog, I posted this a few days ago ...

Where I live, there are plans for 6,000 new houses (opposition to this green-belt building has rapidly receded with the prospects of Aston Martin relocating from Newport Pagnall to this area - how fickle people are ), and there's already plenty of surrounding industrial trading estates. The main attraction is, I guess, is that we are within hailing distance of junction 9 of the M42 and it's around an 8 mile commute to the nearest city centre, which is Birmingham.

Well now, Aston Martin have announced this morning that they are moving to St Athan in South Wales and developing the old RAF station there for the new factory. Much gnashing of teeth in this locality, I gather, but I'm quietly pleased because the HUGE about-turn that Mr Plebgate the MP and all the local Green protesters made about the building of the houses on our greenbelt completely disappeared once Aston Martin had indicated a willingness to consider moving here. It will be interesting to see where the protesters go from here. They can try to resurrect their anti-house building campaign, but quite honestly they have lost all credibility now. No, I don't want to see a whole new suburb of houses built on our neighbouring green fields, Aston Martin factory in the development zone or not, but let's face it, green-belt building is increasingly Government policy nowadays.

Birmingham City Council were going to walk all over any protests anyway, but now, thanks to their Aston Martin u-turn, the local Greenies haven't got a leg to stand on.

[Kaz]

Ha!!!

[Workingman]

Ah, the selective nimby greenies. Houses: No; No; No!!! A prestigious luxury car plant: please, sir, please; the area needs jobs.

Great news for south Wales, especially St Athan. I did two stints of trade training there as it was the RAF's mech eng training school. It did airframes, engines, support equipment, MT, hydraulics, pneumatics.... The other side of camp was a civilian team doing deep servicing of certain types of aircraft. The workforce of the area is highly skilled with many bespoke factories doing one-off or short runs of specialised equipment. An idea place for Aston Martin to set up shop, if you ask me.

But back to greenbelt land, it is so-called because it was expected to limit urban sprawl. However, that cannot work with an ever increasing population, people have to live somewhere. BBC Look North the other night said that Leeds would grow to over one million people by 2025 - 30; that's 200,000 more people. The ideal way for that to happen, if it has to, is for the few bits left between Leeds and Bradford and Leeds and Wakefield to be built on - the creation of a super city of nearly two million. What is more likely, though, is for most houses to be tacked on to the leafy suburbs in the north and west of Leeds to allow for urban flight for those able to afford to. It will mean the growth of the inner-city, with all that entails. Madness!

[saundra]

I'm pleased it's going to south Wales ex miners steel l workers need jobs
They are building a big development here
But how will drs and such cope
No surgery is taking on patients
And our hospital keep closing departments

[TheOstrich]

Yes, I thought from remarks you'd made in the past, WM, that you'd had a posting at St Athan ....

Saundra, our 6,000 new houses could lead to a population increase of 10,000 to 12,000 ...... the infrastructure here is going to be a huge problem. The roads can't cope even at the moment, often there's traffic jams through our "village" centre, there would have to be a brand new doctors' surgery, and also a secondary school + perhaps 2 primary schools, as well as shops. There has been talk of reopening our local railway line to passenger traffic, but that's unlikely until well beyond 2020. Even now, whenever they've mentioned that our long-closed local station could be re-opened, the locals living around it have immediately complained that parking would become impossible ....

[Suff]

You're not wrong about the services Ossie. After the "new 10" joined the EU and Blair did his primadonna bit in saying that the UK would not block "immigrants" for 5 years as the treaties allow, Edinburgh grew by 50,000 people in 2 years. 10% population rise. Social services began to break down, it was impossible to get a doctor or a dentist if you were working, driving in the city became even more of a nightmare than it had been before.

Roll forward a bit more than a decade and things have stabilised. But it was a huge shock at the time.

I find it interesting that in the 1970's the UK had a stable and slowly shrinking population and this was deemed normal and acceptable. Today the UK has an exploding population and this is now deemed both right and "necessary".

So we sacrifice our green and pleasant land for greed.

Nice to know.

I'm glad that St Athen has got the work though. I suspect the Welsh assembly had a lot to do with the selection in the end. There is a lot of deprivation in Wales and they could do with the work.