24/06/10 - Swindon Advertiser Weekly Article

Tuesday’s Budget was, as George Osborne said, unavoidable.  The Chancellor had no choice but to take some tough decisions, but in doing so he has ensured that the less well off are protected.  For the lower-paid, the amount that can be earned without paying tax has gone up by £1,000; that means an extra 800,000 people will stop paying tax altogether.  And for older people, pensions are now linked once again to earnings, so there’ll be no more 75p increases.  Of course there was some medicine that was harder to swallow.  The Budget was the start of a long process to get Britain’s economy working again.  There is a rocky road ahead, but doing nothing simply is not an option.

Earlier this week, Robert Buckland and I secured a debate in the House of Commons to talk about the issues Swindon is facing regarding development.  Robert started the ball rolling by quite rightly applauding the scrapping of the previous government’s house-building targets.  The Regional Spatial Strategy was forcing Swindon to accommodate 36,000 new houses over the next 20 years or so.  The government will instead return decisions about development to fellow local residents, which is something I constantly argued for in my ten years as a councillor.

For my part in the debate, I focused more on the ‘quality of life’ issues which massive new developments expose.  The first problem is the lack of open space associated with high-density developments.  There is nowhere to throw down jumpers for goalposts; nowhere for young children& 39;s sporting activities; and nowhere for older children to let off steam.  This in turn leads to increased levels of childhood obesity and, potentially, to antisocial behaviour, because their endless enthusiasm is not burned off.

The second problem is unadopted roads.  It often takes far too long for areas to be adopted, which allows developers to get away without delivering on the promises in their glossy sales brochures. I would push for stronger powers to create a bond scheme, into which developers would have to pay in advance. If they did not keep to pre-agreed levels of maintenance, the local authority could carry out the work and deduct the cost of it from the bond. That would encourage developers to secure the area& 39;s adoption quicker, because they would then be able to reclaim their bond.  Let us not forget that, while the area is unadopted, local residents still pay council tax.

I’m delighted that the Minister said he would seriously at my suggestion.

For further information on how I am representing you on this issue and others please visit my new website www.justintomlinson.com which includes videos and texts from speeches I have made in Westminster.