Edward Garnier

Conservative Party | Harborough

Proposed Eco-Town Development on Co-Op Farmland in Harborough

Before events make it difficult to stop the above proposal and a significant part of my rural constituency is destroyed forever, may I urge you on behalf of my constituents within the Harborough District and the Borough of Oadby & Wigston not to approve or otherwise encourage the building of 15,000 homes on the approximately 5,000 acres of farmland between the A6 and the A47 mostly owned by the Co-Operative Society (but of which about 500 acres is owned by English Partnerships)? This urban development, if allowed to go through, would utterly destroy a much valued green lung between 5 and 8 miles south east of the City of Leicester to the commercial advantage of the Co-Op but for no obvious local or county-wide public benefit. In reality, there will be nothing eco-friendly about this vast new urban settlement, albeit that I can see it has enormous financial advantages for the Co-Op and EP at a time when farming incomes are low and wholesale development offers better rewards.

This enormous development would create a town of between 40,000 and 60,000 inhabitants on open farm land that would dwarf the neighbouring villages and even the nearest urban community of any size, Oadby. It would create an urban wedge that will break down the local rural environment and community in south east Leicestershire, allow for the swamping of an area of considerable beauty with thousands of houses, cars and lorries and all of the permanent infrastructure that would be needed to support such a large town.

The Co-Op claims this development will create 12,000 or so new jobs. My constituency’s unemployment rate is 1%. Any new jobs would require people to be imported to do them. Strange as it may seem to MPs from less economically vibrant parts of the country, we do not need thousands of new jobs to provide work for jobless people in Harborough or Oadby & Wigston. It is, furthermore, unreal to think that the incoming occupants of the 15,000 new homes would all work within the allegedly eco-factories that the Co-Op claims will provide the jobs. Thousands of people will necessarily commute by car to work elsewhere within the region and, given that the Co-Op wants to build a Parkway Station at Great Glen on the St Pancras-Leicester-Sheffield mainline, it is likely that many hundreds of residents will commute to jobs in London.

We do not need the type of forced or artificial economic regeneration that this proposal would mean. If you want to create 10,000 more jobs in an area with virtually full employment you have to import the jobs and import the housing to accommodate the employees and their families. We are beginning to see what 'only' 800 new houses have done to Kibworth, a village on the A6 barely 5 miles from the proposed development site, in terms of disturbance and placing strains on our local services and infrastructure – just imagine what 15,000 new houses will do not just to Great Glen and its neighbouring villages but to outer Leicester, and to Oadby and rural Harborough as well.

I urge you to distinguish between the immediate or short term financial interests of the Co-op, and the environmental, economic, social and other long term interests of the people of Harborough District and Oadby & Wigston, and not to allow the Government’s attitude towards so-called eco-towns to be affected by a misunderstanding of the facts on the ground or public relations material put out by the developers.

It is worth remembering that the Co-Op has a parallel application for a 5,000 home “sustainable urban extension” or SUE on the same land and that they tried and failed to build a large new town on this site in the early 1990’s. It is clear what they are up to and yet the local community and local planning authorities have no ability to engage in the planning process which has been reserved to you and a new quango. If this goes ahead without local input or consent you will arouse untold anger and revulsion.

If we get this wrong we get it wrong forever.