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Ten Reasons To Oppose Milton Keynes Expansion

For more recent info, see expansion consultation 11/04

[Get the full expansion plan and the official response form from www.go-em.gov.uk/planning/mksm/consultation.php. Deadline 5pm, October 13 2003.

Send your views (including your full contact details) to: The Panel Secretary, MKSM Public Examination, PO Box 163, Room 260, County Hall, Northampton, NN1 1AX, Email: mksm@northamptonshire.gov.uk Fax: 01604 237649]

1. The expansion aims to create massive housing growth around Milton Keynes, and matching economic growth, which will just make current problems worse rather than helping to solve them. The overheating economy in the South East compared with other areas of the UK is already the cause of problems such as overcrowded roads and trains, expensive and scarce housing, and overstretched public services. Growth around Milton Keynes would make these problems worse. Far better to put this massive investment into regenerating regions of the UK where people are desperate for work and thousands of houses lie empty.

2. The expansion is not being managed in a democratic way. It is being pushed through by central government, bypassing local government and the normal planning process. The public consultation is short and inadequate, to be followed by a mini-planning enquiry which will be very selective about which objectors are called to put their case. There is no information yet about whether the local development agency that will execute the MK expansion plan will be subject to any democratic control. It probably won't be.

3. The MK Local Plan has just been completed at huge expense, but now MK Council will have to tear it up. Central government dictating expansion plans like this makes a nonsense of the several years of effort that have just been put into drawing up, consulting, and revising the official Local Plan for Milton Keynes development over the next ten years.

4. The expansion plan assumes that the East-West Rail Link, and a Milton Keynes 'mass transit system' will reduce the impact on the road system. Work on these will actually start either too late or never. Firstly, the expansion plan proposes that work on these will begin between 2011 and 2016, which is too late. Secondly, the decision on construction of the East West Rail Link is up to the Strategic Rail Authority, who might continue to refuse to go ahead with it.

5. Almost all of the expansion in Milton Keynes would go on greenfield sites. This is contrary to government policy which is for the bulk of new development to go on 'brownfield', previously-used land, such as derelict industrial sites.

6. Milton Keynes expansion would destroy existing villages: Wavendon and Woburn Sands will be swamped by thousands of new houses. The best current guess from MK Council is about 3000 new homes in Wavendon and Woburn Sands. Woburn Sands currently has only 1000 houses, and Wavendon is far smaller, so these villages can look forward to being swallowed up by MK as part of the expansion process.

7. The expansion plan proposes more roads, but we know that more roads just makes more car journeys. It is proposed that a new southern bypass will put a new dual carriageway, extending the H10, right through Wavendon and between the current two villages of Wavendon and Woburn Sands.

8. The expansion plan describes itself as 'sustainable development', which is an appalling abuse of the word 'sustainable'. Genuine sustainable development, according to criteria adopted recently by MK council, requires that new houses must be easily removed later without leaving a scar on the landscape, must be built with renewable materials such as wood rather than fossil fuel wasting products such as cement, must generate their own power and use solar energy and/or carbon neutral fuels for heating, must use collected rainwater for washing and toilet flushing, must have few cars and most residents working from home, etc. The term 'sustainable development' as misused in the expansion plan, just means slightly better insulation and slightly better public transport. Building and living in ways we can only get away with for a few more years isn't what 'Sustainable' means. It means being able to do things forever.

9. Milton Keynes expansion will provide new houses for new commuters, but isn't designed to solve existing MK housing problems. If this expansion was designed to solve a local housing shortage, every town and city in the south east would be included in expansion plan! According to the plan, 70% of the new housing will be unaffordable, and only 30% will be affordable, including just 5% for social rent.

10. Public services in Milton Keynes are already badly overstretched. This plan condemns the city to another 30 years of overstretched services. The health service locally cannot cope with the present population. The government's 'Milton Keynes and South Midlands Study' published in 2002 proposed doubling the size of Milton Keynes over the next 30 years. But to make this sound more palatable, the 'Milton Keynes and South Midlands Draft Strategy' expansion plan published this summer only covers the period up to 2016, proposing an extra 34,000 homes on top of the current 70,000. After 2016 another 36,000 houses are expected to follow. Only the first phase is currently being discussed by the government, to make the plans seem less drastic. This political spinning of the expansion process means that, at best, the local health service and schools will be expanded to cope with the first phase of the expansion, only to be overstretched again immediately by the second phase. This deception doesn't enable the public services to be expanded to the size they will actually need to be. They will be lagging behind the actual population level for at least the next 30 years.

You only have until October 13th 2003 to send in your response to the drastic plans build 34,000 extra houses by 2016 (followed by another 36,000 in the next phase which we are supposed to ignore for now). Download the official response form from here. Download the full expansion report from www.go-em.gov.uk/planning/mksm/consultation.php.

If you have time, also object to your MP and Milton Keynes Council.

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