Object

Representation ID: 19261

Received: 08/10/2021

Respondent: Ms Ruth Watton

I'm writing to OBJECT to all of the proposed greenbelt or green land sites but especially DUH 217 (The Horses Field in Wollaston), DUH 211 (The Triangle) and DUH 208, (Holbeache). My objections are multifaceted but the first point is in relation to the environment. Please could I draw your attention to the climate crisis, the imminent destruction of the planet, the loss of bees and other wildlife species. We should be planting trees and
encouraging wildlife not wilfully destroying it. Waste land,
disused factories or office sites should be used for development before any greenbelt is sacrificed. In fact greenbelt should always be protected even if that means us building higher buildings in existing towns. Andy Street (The Mayor) says that there is enough brownfield site land to use to spare the greenbelt sacrifice, so why do Dudley Council say otherwise. I found it particularly concerning to discover that there is actually brownfield sites within the Dudley Borough and wider Black County that have been deemed to be not profitable enough to warrant the money needed spending on them to make them attractive to developers. What cost is too much to save the planet.
Secondly, Greenbelt is vital to everyone's wellbeing, not one person, be that children, teenagers, young people, families, dog walkers, walkers, runners or cyclists had anything supportive to say about greenbelt development when I spoke to them.
They all wholeheartedly objected to destruction of the greenbelt and in fact they were horrified at the prospect of losing their green spaces.

Thirdly, if Dudley build on their green belt (which is already very minimal percentage of the total land in the borough), there will be no argument to prevent South
Staffordshire from building on Dudley’s borders. In this case any increased population will pay council tax to Staffordshire but use Dudley's health, social care, education and infrastructure which is already overstretched to the brink. Urban sprawl will go
unchecked.

Fourthly, building around the Stour River would be catastrophic. Following on from the recent unprecedented floods in Europe, one can only begin to imagine how that
kind of flooding would unfold here on our streets and towns.

Fifthly, anyone who uses the roads locally knows that they are already over full capacity. More roads are not a solution, we must try to reduce road pollution, more
cars mean more pollution - further increasing the argument for town centre housing development. There are poor rail and tram links in the area. Other new estates locally have been built or are currently being built and there has been no corresponding improvement in transport or any other facilities. Air pollution in Wordsley is already the worst in the Borough, this is unacceptable - increased traffic through Wordsley would further exacerbate this problem. As well as roads and other means of transport, infrastructure to include Schools and Health and Social Care is already stretched beyond any reasonable limit. More facilities can be built, but can they be staffed, there are staffing shortages across all of these sectors already.

Sixthly, I feel that the developments would cause inconceivable damage to our heritage. The White Cone in Wordsley is to house the most significant glass museum
in Europe and the Red Cone is one of the few of these furnaces remaining. These historical sites are situated on the canal at the junction where are industrial heritage
meets our beautiful English countryside – this is a tourist attraction and a jewel in Dudley Borough’s crown. The Stourbridge Canal is renowned for its beauty and to
jeopardize this by building on the Wollaston site or Wall Heath's sites and potentially opening up roads that could be used by South Staffordshire to develop along the
canal, such as Friar's Gorse, would be criminal and unforgivable for generations to come.

What are the solutions - looking at any perceived housing shortage, can I point out that successive Governments for the past twenty years have refused to let property
prices fall. What about a yearly windfall tax on all second homes, holiday homes and buy to let properties (2% of their value) and stopping artificially inflating house prices
with low interest rates and schemes for first time buyers and stamp duty breaks etc. This would be a means to create affordable housing far more effectively than building executive homes on the greenbelt. The general public would not look kindly on a Government who sacrificed our greenbelt to line the pockets of wealthy property developers. Also looking at population growth, have you factored in Covid deaths and any increase to those deaths this winter if there is another peak or maybe a peak every winter for the foreseeable. Additionally, what about looking at immigration, population growth over the past ten years has been by about 80% as a result of immigration, is this sustainable in the long term and has this percentage been significantly reduced already as a result of Brexit. Furthermore, with the change to working practice since the Pandemic to favour homeworking, won’t more office space become available for development over the next twenty years. None of us really know what housing needs will be in twenty years’ time so second guessing that and concreting over greenbelt seems short sighted. As a closing point I would like to say that I found the future plans for building offices and shops on Wall Health greenbelt to be astounding. Presently, there are one million unfilled job vacancies in the UK and there are also countless unused shops and offices. How could anyone in their right mind think it a good idea to concrete over countryside to build more vacant work spaces.