Ingleby Manor free school plus 350 new homes approved

It has today been announced the 750-place free school and 350 new homes can now be built after the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government granted planning permission after this was refused by Stockton Borough Council.

Eric Pickles MP, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

The announcement will prompt mixed feelings with residents - supporters will obviously be delighted; opponents to the housing distraught; and many will fear the effect of the new school on the current schools in the locality, particularly Conyers and Egglescliffe.

 

However, the announcement has been overshadowed by criticism of the government's centrist approach in driving forward new housing developments, no matter how unwanted or unneeded, (and which I blogged about just yesterday here), and the grubby way in which the announcement has been delayed for perceived political gain.

 

On three occasions, opponents to new housing schemes have requested the Secretary of State "call-in" the approvals granted by Stockton Council to review the decision.  On three occasions, the request has been refused, on the grounds the applications weren't sufficiently large to merit the government's intervention.

 

However, this particularly planning application was recovered, according to a letter dated 26th September 2013 from the Department for Communities and Local Government, "because it involves proposals for residential development of over 150 units".

 

Now bearing in mind the applications to develop the Morley Carr Farm, Green Lane, and Mount Leven Farm sites were each far in excess of 150 units in size, why weren't these called in?

 

The only rational conclusion is that the 'right' decision (as far as the Conservative party is concerned) was made in those cases and permission granted. The only application to build new housing in Stockton South (James Wharton's constituency) to be refused was Ingleby Manor, and this remains the only one to have seen the government step in and overrule a decision taken by locally elected and accountable councillors.

 

I spoke yesterday about how the residents of Yarm and Eaglescliffe had been betrayed by the Conservative party's approach to planning and craven, cynical desire to see hundreds of new homes built in more Conservative-leaning parts of Mr Wharton's marginal constituency; today we can add Ingleby Barwick to that list.

 

And who has been the cheerleader-in-chief of today's announcement? You guessed it, James Wharton MP.

 

As though this didn't smell enough already, it gets worse. The public inquiry in this matter closed on 28th June 2013, with the inspector, Paul Griffiths, indicating the decision would be made within 6 weeks. So we waited, and waited, and waited...

 

Lo and behold, and as I predicted at the time, the announcement was made today, some three months later, on the eve of the Conservative party conference!

 

That said, I suppose it's pleasing to see the Conservative party can still display some loyalty to its troops, as Mr Wharton receives his reward for bringing forward pro-EU Cameron's Referendum Bill...



Why I left the Conservatives part 1: The National Planning Policy Framework

In the first of a series of posts on some of the specific policies that pushed me to leave the Conservative party, I am going to focus on the one which has arguably caused more damage in Yarm and the surrounding area than any other - the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

Morley Carr Farm, the site of 300-350 new homes in Yarm

Since the introduction of the NPPF in 2012, Yarm alone has seen approvals granted to build up to 350 new homes at Morley Carr Farm, 370 homes along Green Lane and a further 350 homes plus a 100-bedroom care home at Mount Leven Farm. These are in addition to the Allens West site in neighbouring Eaglescliffe, where plans for 800 new homes have been approved.

None of the aforementioned sites in Yarm had been earmarked for development by Stockton Council in its current Core Strategy.  And whilst developers have either owned these sites or owned an option on them for decades, they had never been brought forward before the NPPF was implemented.

In the Conservative Manifesto 2010, it was stated, "We will create a presumption in favour of sustainable development in the planning system". Albeit a rare example of a manifesto pledge actually being honoured and delivered, the manifesto was silent on what else was to follow.

More detail was provided in the Coalition Agreement. It said, "We will... return decision-making powers on housing and planning to local councils." Excellent, we all thought.

It continued, "We will radically reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants lived." Marvellous, we cried. And about time too.

Unfortunately, and as was ever thus, the devil was in the detail of what was to follow.

Paragraph 49 of the National Planning Policy Framework has been the absolute killer. It reads, "Housing applications should be considered in the context of the presumption of sustainable development. Relevant policies for the supply of housing should not be considered up-to-date if the local planning authority cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites."

In situations where parts of a planning authority's local plan is 'absent, silent or relevant policies are out-of date', the NPPF takes precedence. This was a situation a majority of councils, including Stockton Council, found themselves in over a year after the NPPF came into effect.

Suddenly, those council policies consulted on extensively with the public prior to approval which had protected the greenfield sites around Yarm for years, and which directed housing developments to the parts of the borough where they were both wanted and needed, were worthless, supplanted by the NPPF cuckoo in the nest. The presumption in favour of approving new housing developments became king.

If you clicked on the links attached to the three sites in Yarm I mentioned earlier, or if you have read other reports in the press I haven't included, you may have noticed one thing all the reports have in common - James Wharton MP criticising Labour-led Stockton Council for approving these planning applications.

Unfortunately, whilst he's quick to blame Labour for such planning travesties in and around Yarm after the event, his silence prior to those decisions has been deafening.

Mr Wharton failed to object to a single application, let alone speak up for residents at the relevant hearings; residents complain he failed to provide any meaningful support whatsoever to those opposing the schemes; he has consistently refused to utter a word of criticism of the NPPF which allowed these unwanted schemes to go ahead; and, despite the wholesale concern of residents, he didn't even bother to attend July's parliamentary committee debate on 'Localism in Planning' when a number of principled Conservative MPs queued up to represent their residents and, without exception, criticise the NPPF.

This is hardly surprising. For a young and ambitious MP who 'hardly ever rebels' against the party machine, and who has a slender majority of just 332, the NPPF and resulting approval of 1,000 new homes in a traditionally Conservative-voting ward within his marginal constituency could only have been regarded by Mr Wharton as manna from heaven.

That he, and the Conservative party through the NPPF, have not just let down but so badly betrayed residents in Yarm is unforgiveable.

But it isn't just Mr Wharton who is culpable.

When Morley Carr Farm was brought to the planning committee, then Green Lane, and the first time Mount Leven Farm was brought to the committee, not one single Conservative councillor (myself included) followed the national party's wishes and voted to approve these applications.

However, after the Mount Leven Farm application was initially rejected, the developer submitted a second, virtually identical, application was again brought before the committee just months after the first. Second time around, the application was approved with the committee voting 6-5 in favour.

'How did this happen' you might ask. The answer is simple - Councillor Ken Lupton (the chairman of the Stockton Conservatives Association, and leader of the Conservative group on Stockton Council) changed his mind, having voted against the application initially but voting for it the second time around.

Had the Conservative leader voted against the application, as he had previously, it would have been rejected. It is also noticeable that Councillor Lupton has been silent on what prompted his unexplained and devastating volte face.

It goes without saying that I could no longer remain a member of a party who nationally brought forward a policy so damaging to those I represent, and who locally can be described, at best, as duplicitous and opportunist.

I am proud to say that, as a member of the planning committee, I have listened to residents' concerns and not voted to approve a single inappropriate development in the area.

It is a crying shame that the leader of the local Conservatives cannot say the same thing.

Lies, damned bank bailouts and statistics...

A week ago today, George Osborne announced the government had sold a 6% share in Lloyds Banking Group at 75p per share, raising a cool £3.2billion. As the shares were bought by the previous government in 2008 at a price of 73.6p, we are told this represents a profit to the taxpayer of £61million.

Not bad you might think.

However, as demonstrated on the Ripped-off Britons website (an official Guardian blog), and as one might expect from a chancellor who couldn't lie straight in bed, the truth is predictably altogether very different.

Firstly, Osborne's claim failed to take inflation in to account.

We all know, and as the graph below illustrates, inflation has been running well above the 2% target for most of the past 5 years (We also know inflation has been running higher than average pay rises in every month bar one since Osborne entered Number 11, but more on that another time).

The Office National Statistics data shows inflation between 2008 and 2013 has totalled approximately 15%. This means the value 73.6p in 2008 taking into account inflation is approximately 84.6p in 2013.

Suddenly a sale price of 75p is not looking to be such a good deal. But that's not the end of it.

As a consequence of the previous decade of profligacy by Labour, the government didn't have the money in the kitty to buy the Lloyds Bank shares; they had to borrow it. And that comes at a price.

On 13 October 2008, when the terms of the bailout were announced, the UK government gilt yield (ie the cost of government borrowing) ranged from 4.15% for 5-year bonds to 4.50% for 30-year bonds.

What that means is the cost to the government of borrowing 73.6p per share between 2008 and 2013 would be somewhere in the region of 15.2p and 16.6p.

Therefore, just to break even in real terms the government would need to sell its holding in Lloyds Banking Group at a price in the region of 99.8p (84.6p + 15.2p), perhaps more. Furthermore, this real-terms break-even price will increase with every year that passes.

Far from the £61million profit George Osborne claims to have made from the sale, it is clear from the figures above that this most slippery of MPs couldn't be further from the truth. And this is just the tip of the iceberg - even after the sale the government still owns 32.7% of Lloyds Banking Group.

Only time will tell if the loss inflicted on the government by bailing out Lloyds will rival Gordon Brown's catastrophic sale of the country's gold reserves at rock-bottom prices in 1999.

What we do know, however, is that with the government still saddled with an 81% stake in RBS too, the total loss to the taxpayer of the bank bailouts is likely to be colossal - the RBS shares were bought at an average price of 502p; at the time of writing they are worth 362p.

There's no such thing as a free school meal...

During an announcement at the Lib Dem conference, Nick Clegg announced all children in reception, year 1 or year 2 - all those aged between 5 and 7 - would be entitled to receive a free school meal. The cost to the taxpayer is estimated to be somewhere in the region of £600million each year. Not such a "free" school meal then.

 

Irrespective of how needy or affluent a child's family may be, the Lib Dems now expect each and every taxpayer to cough up to feed those little Janets and Johns. How times have changed.

 

In November 2011, Nick Clegg and other Lib Dem ministers were pushing hard for the means-testing of universal benefits to be announced in the autumn statement. These calls were rebuffed by the Conservative half of the coalition, who feared a public backlash against any such announcement.

 

Nevertheless, Clegg pushed on. He called on "millionaire pensioners" to sacrifice, amongst other benefits, their free TV licenses.  "There are some people who are well-off and obviously don't need the benefits they are getting," one unnamed Lib Dem source told the Telegraph. "That's a point we are going to be making from now until the end of this parliament."

 

The cost of giving free TV licenses to everybody aged over 75 costs the taxpayer in the region of £550 million each year.  Two years ago it was unconscionable to Mr Clegg to keep handing out such vast sums in a universal benefit irrespective of the recipient's ability to pay. Today he is proposing to create a new universal benefit costing the taxpayer an even larger sum. What a difference plummeting opinion polls two years makes.

 

Not only that, the move is completely at odds with the government's decision to take child benefit away from the better off.

 

(Nick Clegg claims the free school meals announcement is the price he extracted from the Conservatives for the Lib Dems abstaining on a vote to introduce the tax break for married couples widely expected to be announced at the Tory party conference next week - a tax break believed to be worth a paltry £150 a year, but more on that another time).

 

I won't bother discussing the merits or otherwise of the free school meals policy, other than to say it is patently absurd to ask working parents paying tax on their minimum wage earnings to subsidise the meals of very affluent families.

 

One issue worth considering, however, is the effect this will have on another Lib Dem policy; the Pupil Premium.

 

At present, each school receives an additional £600 each year for each pupil who is eligible for free school meals.  The only means local authorities have of ascertaining how many children are eligible for free school meals (and therefore the pupil premium) is to literally count the number of children who actually receive them. It is down to the child's parent(s) to apply for free school meals; should the family of an eligible child not do so for whatever reason, the school misses out on the pupil premium for that child.

 

Do you see the problem? Once we remove the need for parents of children aged 5 - 7 to apply for free school meals, it will become impossible for local authorities to accurately say how many of those children would have been eligible under the present scheme, and therefore what pupil premium each school should receive.

 

So not only have the Lib Dems have decided to throw hundreds of millions of taxpayers money at families who don't need it (the benefit to families is estimated to be £400 per eligible child per year), they have needlessly created another level of bureaucracy, which will need to be paid for, to continue their pupil premium scheme as is.

 

As the Taxpayers' Alliance succinctly put it, "It's no wonder Westminster fails to deal with unsustainable levels of Government spending when it is so keen on finding new ways to throw other peoples' money at a problem that politicians have created themselves."

 

It is vital that children eat healthily and exercise regularly, but the responsibility for ensuring that lies with parents alone.  Perhaps if the government stopped taking quite so much of other peoples' money and splashing it around willy nilly, particularly on pre-election giveaways, we wouldn't have quite so many families struggling to feed themselves adequately.