Archived Page

This page is no longer maintained.
For up-to-date information please see the new website

The South East Plan

Eva Lipman

The South East Plan comes from SEERA which stands for the South East of England Regional Assembly. This covers the area Berks, Bucks, East and West Sussex, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire and Surrey. The consultation period for the 20 year Plan ended on 15th April 2005.

The indigenous population require approximately 17,000 to 18,000 new homes to cater for more single occupation etc. The average build for the past 5 years has been 25,500 homes. John Prescott would like SEERA to build many more homes to cope with an influx from London, the rest of the country and immigrants. The numbers being suggested are 28,000 homes, 32,000 homes and recently figures of 36,000 and even 40,000 homes per year for the next 20 years.

Each of these new homes requires infrastructure. The figure put on the cost of this is £38,000 per house, which would include things like roads, schools, hospitals, leisure centres and services. So far the government has not given sufficient infrastructure funding to cover the homes that have already been built and so there must be a severe doubt over whether they will fully fund the proposed new homes. To support the influx of all these people, huge numbers of new jobs need to be generated which of course will mean yet more building.

There are various places which are earmarked for intensive building. One is in Kent and an other is where we are in the Western Corridor and Blackwater Valley. The intensive building is scheduled to be around 'hubs'. Two of the hubs are Slough and Reading.

Outline of South East Region with arrow pointing to Taplow

An analysis of the wishes of the people so far consulted says that:

which means that 61% want 25,500 or fewer.

The consultation document put out by SEERA, which should have been sent to every house in the SE, but has not been, is very biased in favour of building more new homes than are actually needed for the indigenous population. Nowhere in the document does it actually say that all we need to build for our own people are 17,000 to 18,000.

It is entirely possible that either SEERA will not accept the wishes of the population on house numbers, or that John Prescott will over-ride SEERA and impose his higher numbers on them. It is to be hoped therefore that as many people as possible wrote giving their views, if our region is not to be completely transformed within the next twenty years.

For more information, see the website: http://www.southeast-ra.gov.uk/southeastplan

It is very interesting that in small print on the back page of the executive summary is the following:

The Assembly agrees to publish this initial draft of the S.E. Plan for public consultation subject to the following caveats:

a) The draft SE Plan has been developed in little more than a year to a timescale set down by the Government. As a result serious doubts remain over the robustness of the data that underpins much of the technical work on which this draft SE Plan is based and, indeed, over aspects of the technical work itself.

b) The timescale has left little opportunity to date for public involvement in the development of this draft SE Plan

c) This draft SE Plan has been agreed for consultation by the Regional Assembly as a whole and does not necessarily reflect the views of individual members/local authorities.