1C / Luton FoE / R1503

 

Milton Keynes & S Midlands Sub Regional Strategy Examination in Public                    

Comments from Luton Friends of the Earth  22 Feb 04                                              

 

MATTER 1C  Effect on adjacent areas

Justification in terms of quality of life impacts for residents at or near proposed sites

 

An issue that seems to have been completely sidelined is the quality of life and aspirations of hundreds of thousands of people, who chose the location of their home to invest in their future quality of life.  They may live in a village or at an urban fringe, with views over and access to open countryside - and peace and quiet.  They will feel that these views and access to footpaths along field margins of this open land is part of their right. 

 

Green Belt is protected for very good reason.  It may not necessarily be public land, but the open views provide a tranquil quality of life, essential for many in today's stressful world.  Indeed, the fact that the small bits designated in the SRS for public use may be the only remnants preserved out of this wide open countryside brings home the sheer scale of what is intended. 

 

Plants, trees and hedges surrounding the towns proposed for expansion provide oxygen, and help to clean up pollution for everyone.  Existing water and sewage supplies would not be able to cope with the development proposed.  Social and transport infrastructure have scarcely been considered.  Yet residents, in a modern democracy, have scarcely been asked or given an opportunity by their government or their own councils to express their views about a plan that will have enormous impacts on their future. 

 

And what of communities in nearby villages?  How sustainable is it for them?  People choose to live in a village because they want a certain lifestyle, a certain quality of life, they want to live in the countryside, with a view across open spaces, not in an 'urban conurbation'.  This is not about rich and poor - many people in the countryside struggle too.  They may have been born there, or they may have worked very hard to achieve it.  They had no reason to think that any of this could be in jeopardy.

 

Farms, villages, hamlets, rivers and streams, hedgerows, lanes, rolling fields - all have their 'sense of place' (a key requirement for sustainable communities, which villages possess already, but could be lost) and their history.   People by their very presence and activities protect the countryside's biodiversity.  The plan would trample over all this.  Many villages would no longer be villages - they would be swamped and surrounded by new housing, becoming part of an urban conglomeration'.  There would be concrete as far as the eye could see.  For those now living in and experiencing these areas of countryside, this would be a tragedy.  Many of their pleasures of life would be gone, and their health would suffer.  For those unable to move away, this could bring their lives to an early end.  Yet the 'Strategy' has no measures to protect rural life and the quality and biodiversity of our countryside.