Official Campaign
Against 10,000 New Houses
Being Dumped In Welwyn Hatfield
Without consultation, democratic mandate, evidence or a proper legal
investigation the Government has told Welwyn Hatfield to find room for
10,000 extra houses!
We believe these decisions should be taken by
local communities, not Whitehall.
LATEST NEWS! May 08: The Government
has now backed their own regional inspectors meaning that they do now expect
Welwyn Hatfield to build 10,000 new homes, mainly on Green Belt, and this
has all happened despite the fact that since the housing consultation was
launched ALL the acute services at the local hospital have been slated for
closure!
Undemocratic: Watch the video
by pressing the play button above.
The consultation deadline passed in
March 2007, but it took the Government until May 2008 to decide that
Welwyn Hatfield must build 10,000 homes, despite the fact that the A&E,
Maternity, Paediatrics, Elderly Care and all operations are to end at
the
QE2 Hospital in WGC.
May 08
Dear Resident,
The Government loves its
consultations. But the reality is that when push comes to shove, we
discover that they've already made up their mind.
That's exactly what happened with
their flawed decision to force 10,000 homes to be built on Green Belt
land here in Welwyn Hatfield.
Never mind that since the housing
consultation was launched, we've been instructed to close our hospital's
major services -- including A&E, Maternity, Paediatrics, Elderly Care
and ALL operations -- this tired Government pushes on regardless.
Of course, Welwyn Hatfield has a
proud tradition of building plenty of new homes. After all, we're mostly
made up of two new towns; Hatfield and WGC. And as it happens we've even
made a start by building 2,000 of those 10,000 homes in various
locations; most notably on the former aerospace site in Hatfield.
We've even gone as far as to say that we'd happily find space for a
further 4,000 houses or 6,000 in total -- so don't let Government
Ministers tell us that we're all a bunch of 'nimbys' -- that simply
isn't true!
But what we do know is that creating
more than 6,000 new homes whilst simultaneously slashing all the
emergency services at our local hospital is just sheer madness.
What we really need are decisions
driven by local communities who are incentivised to create homes for
local people. Not top-down decisions directed by Ministers from
Whitehall.
Despite eleven years in power, this
Government still hasn't learnt that its target orientated,
centrally-driven approach to everything can't possibly provide the
services that we need and it will fail to provide the right kind of
housing in the right locations too.
Give us back our hospital, stop
threatening our post offices, allow developers' money to go into our
town centre in Hatfield, then talk to us about how many homes we're
going to build. But don't axe our services, then tell us we're nimby's
for not meeting their trumped up building targets.
What we need is an approach based on
local decision making. When Conservative have the opportunity in
Government we'll ensure that it's local communities who are put back in
the driving seat. That it's the existing local population that actually
benefits when new housing is built and that as locals we're a part of
the process, not bystanders in some national obsession with Soviet style
planning, right down to the density of the homes that we must be built
right across our own Green Belt.
Yours, Grant Shapps MP
UPDATE!
The Government has
decided that 10,000 houses must be built in Welwyn Hatfield despite the
fact that they're
axing our major services at the QE2 Hospital in WGC.
Legal: No Way To
10k is a campaign established by Grant Shapps MP with support from
across the community.
This site is promoted by Benedict McAleenan on behalf of G Shapps both of Maynard
House, The Common, Hatfield, AL10 0NF.
