Planners need to create communities with soul

A developer has pulled out of a build. Good.

Now let’s get make our councillors do this the right way round.

Hinckley and Bosworth Council have been given an opportunity to create a village or housing area of great worth.

There is a need for more housing. Okay. But why oh why are our councillors not deciding what is required on a piece of land and then asking for submissions, to build it.

Why are they not looking to the future and planning an environment that is conducive to good health and well-being?

If the council formed the plan, new communities could be created and a new type of development built that puts the people who will live there first.

At present, it appears to be an attempt to get as many houses as possible into the smallest possible space. A heartless, coldly mercenary method of house-building.

A development of 2,000 plus houses could surely be a “village”.

Then let those houses be built as a village with a heart, a focal point. Have a community centre for a playgroup and the elderly to meet in, for youth to have activities and slimming world/weight watchers to come and do their courses.

That way it will be a community build, not just streets of boxes with no mind to the psychological effects of growing up in such cold isolation removed from a sense of worth and being.

We need, and should demand more, from our council.

It is not their job to just fulfill the Government mandate of more house.

Rather it is to serve the people who have voted them in, to work for those self-same people and to give this town a sense of value, within an environment conducive to harmony, friendship.

Isolation is being forced onto so many people and particularly the elderly, and young stay at home parents. That should not be the way forward.

All it is doing is building up health problems and loneliness for the future.

A community is a gathering of people. It is old and young living and working together for the common good.

That cannot be easily created with the format used at the present time for housing development.

Much has been written on town planning. For many years people have studied the subject, but why is this not being put into action? The United Nations have a decree on the formation of communities.

The importance of community is well documented. They have had the foresight to realise the importance of the psychological as well as the physical importance of home. Is anyone taking note?.

We ignore community at our peril. We are creating the structures for future generations and it is a time to take note.

Let’s halt all builds for a moment and implore our council to look again and rethink what it is we wish to create..

I haven’t even started on the environmental impact of the Hinckley sprawl....,the lack of roads to take the increasing numbers the loss of wildlife and TREES

Come on HBBC; get a grip and start caring for the community you represent.

And come on the people of Hinckley. Let your voices get heard and let’s stop this mania for houses with no soul. Mary Kelly