Dirty tricks in Middle England

Some of you will have seen the item in the Daily Telegraph for 31 March 2007, “Dirty Tricks in Middle England”. It is a story not dissimilar to ours. In this case two local authorities entered into secret agreements with a developer (in this case, Imperial College London, which wanted to redevelop the site of an agricultural college it had shut down).

For months the local authorities and Imperial College denied that there was any “masterplan” for the college and its grounds. However, the locality was lucky in that there were two journalists in the area who were prepared to do some digging and find out what was really going on.

They found that the local district council had signed a secret agreement with the developer and what was being planned was effectively a “new town” that no-one had been consulted about.

Here are some quotes from the article:

“Despite the councils’ insistence that their planning powers were not compromised, the people of Wye felt that, by signing the [secret] concordats, their authorities might risk critically compromising their roles an independent arbiters of development. The earlier concordat was proof that the residents of Wye had been kept in the dark for months.”

“His contacts had provided evidence that the original purpose of the development – the creation of a new science centre to pursue research into biodiesel – was on the verge of collapse and all that would remain would be the hundreds of acres of commercial housing …..”

[They managed to get a copy of the secret masterplan – a local council “mole” was prepared to help them] “something we had all been told all along did not exist showed up to 250 acres of housing with as many as 4,000 homes and 50 acres of commercial development.”

[Eventually they won and Imperial College was forced to drop its plans].

“The worst legacy of all, though, is the realisation in so many people that conventional forms of middle-class protest – patience, respectability, a willingness to work through the system, dialogue over confrontation – have little effect when public bodies work together with developers whose plans will affect the future of entire communities.”

“Had we relied on decency alone , the builders and surveyors and housing developers would be walking the verdant meadows of Wye at this very moment, with nothing but pound signs in their eyes. Next to that, nothing else matters.”

“William Cobbett saved some of his fiercest ire for what he called the “borough-mongers, the sinecurists and the tax eaters. We won, but in doing so we discovered that there is something wrong and rotten in the governance of England …..”.

If you wish to buy the book which describes what went on, it is called “Saved: How an English village fought for its future, and won) by David Newson. Available for £8.99 from Troubador Books.