Today is the final day for anyone wanting to comment on this one
Today Central Bedfordshire Council (CBC) sent out emails and posts on social media asking for your feedback on their 2023/24 budget. There is a lot of information covered in the summary, but for the purposes of this group we have obviously homed in on section 5.Investing in facilities and infrastructure, in particular the statement;
“….up to £26 million in loans and land value to New Vista Homes – the Council’s wholly owned development company. There is a shortfall between the demand and supply of new affordable homes, particularly affordable rented, older persons’ housing, specialist accessible housing and social rented housing. The company will aim to increase housing supply in Central Bedfordshire through the development of sites owned by the Council. The loans are repayable with interest at the end of each project from house sale receipts”
There’s a couple of points to draw your attention to in the statement; 1) Windsor Drive could very easily be passed over to New Vista Homes for development, we need CBC to commit to not doing this, particularly as Windsor Drive has been declared an Open Space in our draft Neighbourhood Plan. 2) Nowhere in the statement is there any mention of utilising brown sites or other initiatives such as reusing empty properties, they only mention development.
Therefore, we’d like your help in raising the 2 points above in the survey CBC have set up asking for feedback HERE
I’ve highlighted the only space given for free text in the survey as shown in the comments section below. It’s clearly up to you what you want to say, but feel free to copy and paste the following;
Under section 5.Investing in Facilities and Infrastructure, you have mentioned utilising New Vista Homes to develop CBC owned sites, hundreds of Houghton Regis residents do not want Windsor Drive developed, therefore can you confirm New Vista Homes will not be asked to develop Windsor Drive? Can you also confirm brown sites and other housing initiatives will be exhausted before any further open spaces owned by CBC are developed?
The survey closes 24 January 2023, let’s remind CBC we are still here.
Many thanks
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