Disgraceful state of bus station
Maidstone’s bus station is being neglected. It has become an eyesore. No cleaning seems to be taking place. For the county town, it is a disgrace. Pigeons are nesting in parts. Bird’s mess covers the ground, doors and windows. It is becoming a health and safety hazard for the people who use it daily. It needs a really good clean-up. Michael Morris Lynley Close, Maidstone rural. If Maidstone Council shows determination and toughness and gets the strategy right it will improve human health, quality of life and economic prospects in our borough for a generation.
Maidstone Council’s draft Low Emissions Strategy was disappointing in its lack of ambition. However, it is councillors who will agree the final strategy. This means there is still hope that Maidstone council can frame a truly visionary clean air blueprint.
Our strategy must influence not only Maidstone Council services, such as planning, housing, and licensing, but those of our partners.
Key actions should tackle road and public transport impacts, air pollution from agriculture, diesel locomotives and river boats (where micro-particulates, for which there is no safe level, are a particular problem), enforcement (to tackle idling engines, for example), diffuse pollution (such as that produced by heating systems), use of planning conditions to deliver ‘clean fleets’, better epidemiology (to understand local health impacts), improved monitoring, planting of more street trees (and linked innovations such as CityTree technology), and ensure Maidstone council and its contractors to utilise clean technology. Tony Harwood Maidstone Borough Councillor for North Ward It is so nice to see Cllr Tony Harwood writing yet again regarding our broken planning system. The thing is, he is one of the orchestrators helping to break it. He talks about the concreting over of our town and surrounding villages, stating on (oh so many) occasions how he loved all the frogs, newts and toads in the woods in Bearsted and helped out on this farm, that farm and generally writes about being the stalwart of saving everything green.
The thing is, he is the person sitting on the team of councillors who generally proposes acceptance of the application to build. He is the person who argues in favour of building over our beautiful green spaces, after reassuring those who are under threat of development he will help them.
He is causing residents to suffer declining quality of life. He is voting to trash our wildlife habitats, and then bragging he is saving what is left of the land to build an ecology park.
He is helping to pollute our congested roads, which are continually gridlocked. I must say though, contrary to what Cllr Harwood says, that I see less roadkill on our roads now, because cars can’t go fast enough through our gridlocked streets to actually kill that much. Even the hedgehogs stand a much better chance now in our town due to traffic standing still for most of the time.
Thanks to Cllr Harwood and others in our ‘broken’ Maidstone planning system, there won’t be much point in having someone to fight for our beautiful green fields soon, all the time we have our own ecological ‘arsonists’ to make sure they are built on. Sandra Knatchbull Ashford Road, Bearsted While Bruce Ditcher (KM Letters September 28) calls for council officers to be sacked for the decisions the council makes, it should be noted it is elected councillors that make decisions and they need voting out rather than officers being sacked. Maidstone’s Lib Dem run council are making the same appalling decisions the previous Tory administration were making yet sadly people continue to vote them into power.
I suspect this is partly due to the blame shifting some politicians do. Lib Dem Cllr Tony Harwood bemoaned a ‘broken planning system’ yet his party currently run the council and his party spent five years in national government supporting the Tories while failing to tackle the same broken planning system. Methinks the Lib Dems doth protest too much?
It is very clear the only sure way to get change is to vote for it. You don’t get change by voting for the same parties that continue to make appalling decisions. Stuart Jeffery Maidstone Green Party, Buckland Road, Maidstone