Will new housing plan pander to the affluent?
RE: 1,500 homes at Walsgrave village hill on the green belt land. I was surprised that no one bothered to comment on this article (May 9). Though everyone would be overjoyed with additional car parking space at the hospital, we should be careful not to let developers and Coventry City Council rip up the greenbelt whether in Coventry or just outside. Obviously people are desperate for affordable homes to escape the unregulated high rentals, but will these homes be affordable for the great majority of people on green belt developments which pander mainly to the more affluent? Perhaps the Labour council should look to the Labour manifesto with its commitment to build 500,000 council houses – but there again they wouldn’t receive council taxes from the higher bands. My greatest concern is that all these green belt developments may be built on a great deception. Could it be, as Merle Gering revealed at the recent King’s Hill meeting that the actual population figures are widely inaccurate, especially in relation to student numbers? No one, of course, believes in Coventry’s employment and population projections, save for councillors and officers, who have yet to come to terms with developments in robotics and artificial intelligence. Certainly the 15,000 anticipated jobs at Friargate are fast eroding and it is no surprise that their one tenant, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, has defected to Birmingham especially as HS2 will make this city a far more attractive prospect.
It seems to me, and I am a genuine Coventry kid, that the Labour members are so desperate to get Coventry into a top ten city that they are losing a sense of reality. What a pity that John Mutton is no longer leader of the council as his perceptive and principled approach to green belt is sorely missed. A Taylor Kenilworth