Raising concerns over plans for homes

The Yorkshire Post 15/02/2005
From: Peter Greenhill, Parkside Avenue, Cockermouth, Cumbria.

THE latest mouthing from the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is in a document entitled Moving Forward: the Northern Way.
So far nobody can understand the reasons for it. It does, however, talk about a total of 1.5m northern homes being under consideration for demolition, of which 400,000 might be rebuilt. So what about the remaining 1.1m?There is opposition to this proposal from organisations which work to protect our heritage, namely English Heritage, the Department of the Environment and local authorities, who all agree that the average cost of refurbishment would be £38,000 per house – almost half the cost of re-building the homes.But to keep this sort of opposition at bay, Mr Prescott has decided to use the unelected regional assemblies to spearhead this assault on what are in many cases, serviceable and occupied properties.I need hardly remind readers that there was the matter of a referendum in the North East to decide whether or not to have a North East Assembly. The "No" vote was one of the largest votes against a serving government.It was also suggested by Mr Prescott that if this happened, the whole programme for regional assemblies would be cancelled. But as with so much else, that promise has been squashed, and we are now going to see these undemocratic regional assemblies taking on the wholesale demolition of properties for no apparent reason other than what is referred to as "low demand" or "market failure" – whatever these phrases mean.In addition, some over-salaried twerp has suggested that "this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the North to shape its own destiny by bringing about change".Well, if shaping is required, we will certainly have a lot of rubble and bricks to do it with.People should ensure their MPs know about the depth of feelings against this.