I have now spent some time trying to suppress my urge to call this piece ‘How a small group of people managed to persuade the government to sacrifice the wildlife, farmland, communities and the most vulnerable in Devon to further their own interests.’ Obviously, that’s overly histrionic, possibly inaccurate and definitely not helpful, but it does highlight what I and many others are thinking about the government’s decision to push Devon into this urban-centric devolution deal.
Why are so many people unhappy about it?
Firstly, it seems to me that people are questioning the need for it. Why are we, the people of Devon, being asked to find approximately £80m to fund a scheme that diminishes our democratic representation, increases our council tax (hopefully in the short term), hands over vast swathes of countryside to city councils, breaks communities and splits towns like Dartmouth and Totnes apart.
When district councils were first told about Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) a couple of years ago, they were asked to come up with viable plans. At South Hams, we didn’t like the idea – we would be scrapped for a start, but the plans that the district councils eventually came up with made some sort of sense. Devon is a difficult county to organise, but the 4,5,1 plan that all the district councils signed up to at least meant that every rural area had a major urban centre attached, that services could be managed and that there was a sustainable way forward. What we have now basically means that the cities have cherry picked the countryside they want to grow into and abandoned the rest.
People are also not happy about being either pushed in with a city council, possibly to be built up into a suburb, or being effectively abandoned to the green wasteland in the middle. The danger to villages and communities dragged into the Greater cities is real. Labour councillors from both Plymouth and Exeter have stated that they are particularly pleased with the deal because they feel that their cities ‘have been constrained by tight boundaries, set decades ago, which stop them from building the homes they need’. (taken from a letter sent to the minister responsible, Steve Reed, by leaders of the three city councils).
This ‘homes they need’ line, which for quite a while has meant ‘homes we want to build to keep the economy going’, might well mean, in Exeter’s case, their defunct Greater Exeter Plan, which was vetoed a while ago by East Devon District Council because of the negative effect it would have on their district. If Exeter has really pushed this entire debacle on us all because they were thwarted in their expansionist aims earlier, then that is really quite shocking. I’ve learnt to distrust any close connection between politics and housebuilding, to be honest.
At least in the city areas, there should be a continuation of services and usable infrastructure. The great leftover rump in the middle is what we should all be very worried about. It will become the largest unitary area in the country with the lowest density of people, with one of the oldest population groups and one of the largest network of roads to maintain. It will be one of the only unitary authorities in the country without a dominant administrative centre, we will have lost our economic hubs, all three of them and will face severe budgetary challenges.
‘It’s alright, Jack’ for those in Labour-run Plymouth with its MOD contracts, or Exeter with its science park, but abandoning the rest of us to struggle and suffer is irresponsible in the extreme. The one phrase you hear over and over again, is that Government just doesn’t care: its not interested in the countryside (or all the people who live in it, it seems). What about adult care in rural areas, which by default costs more than it does in the cities? What about education, housing, healthcare? How will planning work? You ask these questions, but the response back from council leaders who have been asking the same questions of ministers, is that they don’t know because the government just doesn’t seem to care.
What, then, is the point of all this? It appears that the government is following a city-led economic recovery agenda and that a lot of that recovery seems focused on their insane 1.5 million house building target. No better way to embrace that, it seems, than by removing any remaining restraints on those eager-to-build folk in the rural cities, and to look the other way at the effects it has on the population, on the environment and, of course, on some of the most beautiful landscapes in Britain.
We don’t vote Labour in round here, so are, in a way, expendable…or at least, if I was cynical, I might think that. Destroying so much countryside, or should I say potentially destroying so much countryside, doesn’t really fit in with their supposed environmental credentials, but as approval for the Rosebank oilfield appears to be going through, it looks as though that ship might have already sailed.
There are so many questions to which we don’t have answers. Where will the council be based? What will happen to town and parish councils? How many councillors will there be? Will there be local hubs? Where will our funding come from? Why is it happening?
We do seem to be in the same boat as several other counties, who seem just as cross as we are; but after all, we are just a bunch of nimby old country folk, easily ignored. Actually, on reflection I think my original comment was probably correct – we are all just being sacrificed on the altar of housebuilding and for the benefit of a few folk in Plymouth and Exeter. A plague on both their houses, quite frankly.
Georgina Allen is a Green Party councillor for South Hams Totnes ward.
