31 October 2020
Having just read the Borough Council’s Corporate Business Plan I am struggling to reconcile a number of important and mutually contradictory issues.
The plan is the main strategic driver for the next three years. The language used throughout is one of the reasons I am struggling. It’s not that I can’t understand the text, it’s more that the language is inviting me to leave reality behind and inhabit some sort of trance-like state and when I wake up the climate is fine, species are returning, we are generating our own energy, there are mini-buses, cycle ways.
The corporate plan tells me that, over the past 3 years, the council has worked to create a ‘sustainable and vibrant economy’.
It goes on to say that councillors are working ‘towards a new socio-economic model that is climate neutral, resilient, sustainable and inclusive’.
Apparently, the strategies within the corporate business plan will ‘safeguard the natural assets of geology, soil, air, water and all living things that make up our life support system; capturing the value of nature in our economic planning’.
All this and more too. We are going to continue to build more housing, in addition to the seven new ‘garden communities,’ on greenfield sites which will all have, ‘fast track specialist surveys’. The Meecebrook Garden Community alone will have 10,000 new houses, a new motorway junction and a new railway terminal!
All of the above contradicts the notion of sustainability. There is no mention of social housing, no mention of cycle ways and shuttle bus services, stringent air quality control, land left for wildlife without disturbance, increased recycling, energy generation.
The Friends of the Earth site which presents how well your own council is performing against 4 key indicators: transport, renewable energy, waste re-used, recycled or composted, and housing. At the time of writing Stafford does not score well. Only 2% of commuter journeys are made by public transport, cycling or walking; only 4% of our energy is renewable whereas some similar councils have over 50%; waste, re-used, recycled or composted is around 50% and only about 38% of the housing stock is well insulated.
What we don’t need is more out-of-town communities. We need some honest, plain talking before another unsustainable, environmentally damaging 3-year plan trundles ahead.
Sign up for updates
Find out more
