Do you consider there are other challenges that we should be addressing?
Please explain your answer
Nowhere does the consultation address the root cause of our planning dilemma, which is OVERPOPULATION. Unless councils reverse that trend, no amount of development and planning is going to succeed. Of course, this requires political will from Parliament and central government. Policies need to be fundamentally changed, so I wonder what our local MPs are doing to bring this about?? (Nothing whatsoever, I suspect.)
The "solution" offered by all major parties is no solution at all. They simply intend to build, build, build – and then build even more, until we lose all our open space and we end up building towers into the sky. Central government has been bullying and bribing local authorities into providing ever more housing. We can't go on like this. It is ruining our towns, such as Walton, and eating into our open spaces. It is a scandal that EBC faces the threat of having its housing affairs removed and handed over to Surrey CC, of all people. (God forbid!) It is high time that local councils collectively revolted and told the government to get real.
Present policies and regulations make an absolute mockery of the local planning system. It is all governed by distant politicians and civil servants. They neither know nor care what is best for our community. We need to reverse the insane presumption in favour of developers/applicants. We also have to level the playing field, by allowing the public as well as developers the right of appeal against decisions. At present, far too many local decisions are overruled on appeal, and it is a one-way process. Inspectors have rendered meaningless the term "sustainable" development, by allowing construction in all sorts of inappropriate locations.
Elmbridge cannot keep accommodating more and more people. The council needs to pull up the drawbridge. EBC will always be fighting a losing battle, as long as our governments are committed to freedom of movement. We face endless inward migration, which is pushing house prices inexorably upwards. I don't believe that Waltonians are breeding like uncontrollable rabbits - so where is all the pressure on the housing market coming from? For whom, exactly, are we building all the hundreds and hundreds of new homes?
In my 38 years of living in Walton, I have witnessed the construction of thousands of homes. Has any of that succeeded in preventing the current pressure on the local housing market? No, not at all. Indeed, it has merely exacerbated the problems. Every new development encourages yet more inward migration. We have to say "enough is enough" and make it clear that our area is full up. If that deters people from coming here to live, so be it. They cannot expect the council to continue providing more and more homes, specifically to accommodate them.
We are told that the UK population is going to rise by nearly 10,000,000 in the next 25 years. That is intolerable madness. It is a recipe for conflict and crisis. Instead of working out how to prevent it, the authorities are merely working on how to absorb it. It's not possible to manage that successfully.
We are also told that according to the SHMA, Elmbridge needs to create 9,480 new homes in less than 20 years. That would ruin our borough. I repeat: for whom, exactly, are these homes required? The council keeps parroting that this number has been "objectively" assessed, so we are expected to take it as gospel. Residents are dismayed by this short-term planning. It will not prevent continual inward migration. Indeed, it will only encourage it. Building hundreds of new homes each year will solve nothing. It will merely lead to more and more building further down the line.