After the overwhelming success of their Cypress Point development in St. Annes, Kensington Developments have been looking for further locations to build their next Noddy Town on.
Residents of Cypress Point, yesterday
They have been buying up land on Marton Moss for a long time, even before John Prescott decided it was fine for developers to steamroller through green belts around the UK (but not the ones around his 9 bathroom country estate).
Recently, after Government warnings that unless Blackpool council got some house building going they would be dictating where and when houses would be built in the area, Kensington submitted plans to build more than 600 homes on the Marton Moss land that they had purchased.
There was a huge furore from locals who, after taking hundreds of thousands of pounds from Kensington in exchange for their land, suddenly decided they didn’t want them building houses on their back gardens! I have no sympathy with that, but as a local to the Marton Moss area, I don’t want another 600 houses there if only because of the impact on the already overloaded infrastructure.
The Council managed to stall proceedings and never actually voted on these plans, but it has been revealed that in the same month, Kensington Developments bunged £5,000 to Blackpool South Conservative Association. Guess which area they encompass?
Now, Kensington have in June this year submitted another planning application for almost 600 houses. No decision on this has been reached yet, but in the previous month, it was revealed today, Kensington bunged another £5,000 to the local Tories.
I am hard
I would normally condemn this in the strongest possible words, but instead I’ll let our celubrious Council Leader, Peter Callow, do it instead.
“To accept the payments was completely out of touch with reality.”
He is, for once, absolutely right.
“After this most recent revelation, I demand the Blackpool South Conservative Association, of which I am not a member, repays the full £10,000 within the next 24 hours”.
I wonder; if he were a member would he be saying that? Would he have accepted the money?
Unfortunately I think he is only saying this stuff to save himself.
Everyone suspects a back hander culture in politics, and we saw in 2007 prominent North East property developer David Abrahams bunging secret donations to Labour using middle-men and then suddenly being granted permission to build a highly contentious business park.
I would like to think these Kensington donations were not intended to influence local councillors into supporting the housing construction on Marton Moss, but if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it usually is a duck.
Quack quack!
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Unfortunately I think he is only saying this stuff to save himself.
I think he genuinely means it, if only to decapitate Kenrick, whom he loathes and holds the view that the Moss development should be opposed.
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Ah – you’ve just seriously pissed off any Cypress Point residents that read that – they are in “Lytham” and therefore a cut above everyone else no matter how bad a dive they live in (and given that the land there does subside, they probably will dive down into the land within the next few years).
It is not normal in Fylde to accept donations from such developers and declare them at all. And we are Kensington-on-Sea after all. We do have our planners spend a lot of time discussing their plans so that they have maximum chance of getting them passed, and of course the last head of planning did go to live on Cypress Point and work for Kensington as a consultant with his new business. Of course this doesn’t mean no-one ever receives money for favours – only that they are not as stupid as Blackpool South Conservatives in making it so easy to find the donation information and put two and two together to make 4 or 5, depending on whether this hasn’t influenced the application or has.
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Don’t worry I won’t lose any sleep over annoying a bunch of nouveaux riches!
There will have been loads of back handers just like there will be for any large project requiring favourable decisions from a council or government. But like you say, it’s their own naivety that has dragged them into this quagmire.
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Eugh… Cypress Point.
Those houses are awful. Their walls flex like cardboard.
Have I mentioned this before?
I wish they built homes like they used to, in the olden days!
Someone fetch my pipe and slippers…
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Cypress Point is real quality compared to Lytham Quays – in fact when I went to have a walk around I actually laughed at them. And I didn’t do that with the Spanish style “Seville Court” (next to the White Church) or Cypress Point (ok – just devoid of any real style and far too big on inappropriate land for building). Plus of course they couldn’t get enough people to move into Cypress Point (the management company banned them putting up for sale signs as there were so many) and they are housing people at the taxpayers’ expense. The old Queen Mary’s development is apparently housing the travelling community as again, in Fylde hardly anyone actually buys and moves in these developments (or rents them). They mostly lie empty and useless by buy to let investors from outside the area. So I really don’t understand why we have to build on our floodbelt when there are empty properties everywhere.
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Lytham Quays is even worse than Cypress Point.
They just look like a half-arsed attempt at a Lego estate. All bunched up together, too.
I really like Seville Court, though. But that’s just my sense of escapism at work…
Perhaps a solution to the latter problem you mention would be to devalue the tracts of land that developers buy?
I presume one of the reasons they lie empty is because people just can’t afford them or get a mortgage for them in the first place, so some go to buy-to-let owners. Understandably, developers want to make the money back on the land they bought… but what if they bought cheap land in the first place?
Liberalise planning laws – allow construction on rural and Green Belt land, increase the supply of land and devalue land prices.
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Actually, in addition to that very last sentence, I would also argue that land owners in rural and Green Belt areas might see the value of their land go up, seeing as the intrinsic value of it would have been increased. Suburban land would presumably fall somewhat in value.
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My ideal solution if we did need so many extra houses would be to not expand the current towns but create a new one with new transport links to current places.
If we just need a bit, then compulsorily purchase areas that are in need of doing up (or vacant Kensington land in Fylde as there’s not much left they don’t own) and build just what we are going to need for the next few years. Leave flood plains and land in risk of subsiding alone.
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Then I think that would fit perfectly in to the option of developing rural and Green Belt areas. Allows plenty of space for homes and perhaps a more natural growth strategy.
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Yes – but that is what the SHLAA is arguing these “rural extensions” are. When they mentioned building in the green belt, few thought they actually meant enlarging every existing area until they all merged together.
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To my knowledge, building eastwards is virtually impossible due to planning constraints, which is why there’s the concentration of development in the confined spaces of our Fylde suburban areas.
I think it’s a bit unrealistic to build in the middle of nowhere – I would imagine lots of people want to live at least within a few minutes’ drive of civilisation – but I wonder if there would be the rush to claim land and build to quotas if planning laws were derestricted in this way?
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There’ s plenty of land for the house numbers quoted off the M55 near the Fleetwood Road within Fylde – and that would be a good location as it’s very easily combined with proper road improvements up to Wyre that would bring that area better transport links and therefore prosperity. Once they’ve merged Wrea Green /Lytham St Annes/ Blackpool/ Westby / Kirkham /Cleveleys etc what future do we have? We’ll be larger than the major cities and probably ruled by the worst idiots the areas can club together.
But it still begs the question – where are all these people? School roles are falling in Fylde – so where is the expansion coming from?
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