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THE WAY FORWARD FOR IMPROVED TRANSPORT LINKS |
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THE WAY FORWARD FOR IMPROVED TRANSPORT LINKS |
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THE PROPOSAL to re-open a railway station to serve the town and locality of
Bourne is a long-term project flowing from a simple appraisal of our economic
and transport infrastructure, and our needs as a community. The difficulty is in getting anyone to stand up and adopt the solution. We are, as noted in the East Midlands Regional Development Plan, in “a planning lacuna” which is a polite way of saying that the bureaucrats regard it as someone else’s problem. The Lincolnshire Observatory census map shows this area to be the wealthiest part of the county. That wealth is here because our economy is caught within the ebb of Peterborough, or to be more accurate, we are on the edge of the commuter belt to London. The reality is that our prosperity hangs by a very fragile thread, namely, the A15 trunk road to Peterborough and the rail link thereafter to King’s Cross. This is evident by the heavy flow of traffic travelling south along the A15 in the morning, and again north in the evening. Over the past five years, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has encouraged vast housing developments in the regions. In our area, that development has taken place along a track either side of the A15 from Market Deeping to Folkingham. The developers have responded with gusto to the demand for new housing. They have made good profits, but sadly they put minimal investment back into our community. The Section 106 agreements, the contracts that formalise what the developer will provide for the community, are a form of legalised Danegeld. As the Croft hearing last year demonstrated, South Kesteven District Council (SKDC) and Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) have sold the rights to development at knock down prices. In so doing, both SKDC and LCC have short-changed the people they represent. Housing development should follow the same principles as those which underly environmental law, namely that the “polluter should pay”. Excessive housing development is a form of environmental pollution and so it is only right and fair that those who contribute to congestion on the A15 should contribute financially to a solution. As such, as it is clear there is no central government money for new road development, the developers should chip in by contributing to a joined-up infrastructure plan that gives proper weight to environmental concern. Although there is a place for bypasses on the A15, for example around Bourne, in the longer term we need more innovative thinking. If we were starting with a blank sheet of paper, no one in their right mind would build a railway station in a city centre such as Peterborough. Ideally, we need an out of town location where we can think about the related infrastructure such as roads, parking and feeder access. When I looked at the map, Essendine, for example, met the requirements, midway between Peterborough and Grantham, midway between Stamford and Bourne, a rural location with reasonable road access. Essendine was also once a former main line station to which Bourne itself had a rail link. A new station established at this point would cut the heavy traffic into Peterborough in the morning from the north and therefore would have environmental benefits. From an economic development perspective, it would throw the existing zone of prosperity a further 20 miles into the Lincolnshire heartland. As stated, it all looks excellent in theory. The difficulty is finding someone to lead or adopt the project. Essendine is in Rutland, not Lincolnshire, Peterborough or Northamptonshire. Theoretically, the Welland Sub-Regional Strategic Partnership, a cross-boundary, cross-partnership organisation working for rural re-generation across four counties, could provide the political lead, but it is difficult to find someone there to do so. LCC is focused on Lincoln, and SKDC on Grantham. Both appear to have little interest in the southern, prosperous part of the county. Network Rail appears to be keen, post its privatisation/re-nationalisation, to accept responsibility for absolutely nothing. GNER, having paid an excessive amount for its second franchise, is keen to milk it for all it can get. An officer from SKDC told a Local Area Assembly meeting last year that we had more than satisfied our housing allocation, yet the planning applications continue to come in. Local opposition to this excessive development, as evidenced at The Croft planning appeal, gets stronger and more frustrated. As such, we have an obvious problem but no way of persuading the endless levels of bureaucracy to stop passing the buck and to solve it. There is a clear failure of planning and foresight at national, regional, county and district level. Faced with such powerlessness, it is not surprising that we have a crisis in faith in our democracy. This stand-off needs a market solution. It is clear that the developers must be called to account. We do have the power to force change. At the end of the day, this is about politics, and politics is about money. That is the bottom line. We cannot stop the planning applications coming in, but we must ensure that we extract a proper price from both a community and environmental perspective. As a community we must demand that both SKDC and LCC become more proficient in negotiations over the S106 agreements, and in so doing up the ante in terms of the Danegeld extracted from the developers. If the developers want to build more houses, then they must also contribute to the necessary investment in the social, environmental and transport infrastructure of our communities. For me this is the obvious solution. We need to get the public sector and the private sector aligned to the needs of the community. WRITTEN JUNE 2006
Photograph of Councillor Horn courtesy Lincolnshire County Council |
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