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What are the latest developments?

Since the general election the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles MP, has confirmed the government's intention to abolish rapidly regional bodies, so returning decision-making powers and housing planning to local councils. Consequently decisions on housing supply will rest with local planning authorities.

Charnwood Borough Council (CBC) is now waiting for further guidance from the government before it announces any changes in its housing strategy, but BABTAG's expectations, that freed from the shackles of imposed locations and numbers, CBC would drop the grandiose SUE scheme and replace it with more modest proposals, have not been fulfilled. The Thurmaston SUE remains an option although other sites will be considered and further consultation is promised once Charnwood digests the latest housing projections, knows the fall-out from the governments spending review and absorbs the guidance expected in the Decentralisation and Localism Bill.

What did Charnwood orignally propose?

CBC had been told by our regional government office to build houses not just for its own population increase but also for that of Leicester City. How many extra homes this constitutes is not yet clear and is a point being currently investigated further by BABTAG. We do know that CBC's own forecasts of internally-derived population growth are stated to be an increase from 164,800 people in 1997 to 177,300 in 2029, an increase of 12,500 over a period three years longer than that covered by "Charnwood 2026: Planning for Our Next Generation".

The latest issue of Charnwood 2026 (dated October 2008) at least acknowledges that CBC is not planning for our borough's next generation, but for that of some other place. For instance, the document invites us to answer the question: 'Do you agree that future growth of Leicester should be focused east of Thurmaston and north of Hamilton?' (page 37 of Charnwood 2026) and refers to: ...a sustainable urban extension to Leicester be delivered on the land east of Thurmaston and north [of] Hamilton...' (page 82 of Charnwood 2026).

CBC planning up to 2026 envisaged 19,300 more houses were needed in the borough between 2001-2026. As far as we can see no one yet knows how many people they will accomodate, but it will presumably be more than that figure of 12,500. BABTAG exists to promote the good of its parishes and of Charnwood. Whitehall may propose, but our focus is on helping CBC dispose.

CBC has progressed through its Whitehall-imposed building programme to the extent that as of today it reckons it needs to build a remaining 9,685 more homes of that initial 19,000+ between now and 2026. It has decided to achieve this in two throws of the dice - some 3,500 homes around Garendon and another 5,000 homes on that spot described above as "East of Thurmaston and North of Hamilton". This latter area is shown on page 82 of Charnwood 2026 and identified as "preferred option" on page 5 in the 8-page summary of Charnwood 2026 - and we show it in all its gory glory on our Maps Page. If implemented it is the end of our parishes as we know them.

Because CBC knows that these two one-off New Town units (the "preferred option" would be not far off the size of Syston) are a nonsense they have given them a name: a Sustainable Urban Extension (Sue to her friends). Keen followers of plannerspeak will immediately guess that 'sustainable' applied in this context invariably means 'unsustainable'. the "preferred option", and its sister New Town, is unsustainable, firstly because its size renders its development unmanageable by CBC and second, because it violates so many basic principles of urban planning - something tacitly admitted elsewhere in CBC's very own Charnwood 2026. the "preferred option" is not only dreadful for our parishes, it is also just as bad for our borough.

This page is not the place for a detailed analysis of the "preferred option". This is being undertaken at various levels by and for BABTAG at present. Our opening press release, issued on 5th of Dececember 2008, doubles as our mission statement and we invite you to read it.