Occasional Liberal Democrat Voice contributor Gareth Wilson has been selected to fight George Osborne in his home constituency of Tatton in May. He is seen here with Paddy Ashdown at Liberal Democrat conference in Glasgow.
Gareth lives in Mobberley in the constituency and recently successfully led a campaign which defeated an attempt to build an unsustainable large housing development.
On his selection, Gareth said:
I’m delighted I’ve been given this opportunity to represent the residents of Tatton. I have lived in and around the area for the majority of my life and it is an incredible honour to have the opportunity to represent the constituency.
Over the years I have lived here with my family, I’ve got to know the key issues local people want me to fight for, they feel they have been ignored and let down by the Conservatives after many years of neglect and cuts to local services.
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21 Comments
Congratulations to Gareth
Can you clarify what “unsustainable development” is though? .As far as I can see the main objection seems to be that the 1,000 new homes would be subject to airport noise http://www.garethwilson.co.uk/ilford_way_rejected
Best of luck Gareth, but I recommend spending a bit more time with tax and finance professionals. Investors in Britain are already paying quite a lot of tax. I prefer to use the term “investors”, rather than “corporations”, because it is the investors who own the corporations.
However I am sure you will do a great job standing up for local services.
Good Luck Gareth Wilson !
Mind you, anyone fortunate enough to live in Mobberley is doing pretty well on the luck front already.
My mother used to go to Mobberley for her summer holidays in the 1930s. A family friend of my grandfather kept the signal box at the level crossing and lived in one of the cottages there.
As a small boy I used to love being take by my parents “out into the country” to eat crisps and drink lemonade at The Railway pub.
I went back recently (fifty years later) to discover it has hardly changed. I hope you can keep it that way!
The reason why Mobberley should not be subject to further substantial development is that it is within the Manchester Green Belt and is a locality of strong heritage and environmental importance. Cheshire has an ancient landscape with a high density of old hedges and trees. It is also home to a fifth of England’s ponds, and if you look at the map you will see that the countryside around Mobberley is dotted with little blue spots. Cheshire is not a suitable location for Noddy-house sprawl, though there is plenty of degraded land on the other side of Manchester that is. As for Manchester Airport, once again, I invite readers to consult the map, which shows the runway breaching the urban envelope and jutting out menacingly into ancient countryside like a fatal disease on a culture dish.
“I went back recently (fifty years later) to discover it has hardly changed. I hope you can keep it that way!”
The true voice of conservatism !
‘Led a campaign against housing’
zzzzzzzz
Simon there’s lots of info on our website http://www.mobberleyrams.com that explains our objections. Here’s the main objections that the council agreed with.
Scale – Mobberley has already grown by over 200 dwellings in the last 10 years, and the addition of nearly 400 new homes will irreparably change the character of the village forever and turn it into a town.
Flight Path – The development falls under the flight path, less than 1 mile from Manchester Airport. You can’t have a conversation as the fly over, almost constantly through the day and evening. We simply shouldn’t be building under the flight path and subjecting people to years of noise pollution misery.
Lack of Affordable Homes – 15% affordable housing on a site this size is way below the 30% we’d expect and would not benefit the village or younger residents looking to remain in the village when they buy their first home.
Traffic – Over 1000 new residents will bring over 4000 new daily vehicle movements to our busy village roads. The site feeds directly onto Town Lane, which is already extremely busy and backs up during rush hour.
Parking & Shops – Parking at our local co-op and shops is extremely limited. This results in cars parking on Town Lane, further exasperating the traffic situation. No new shops were included in the plan.
Schooling – Our village school is already massively oversubscribed and there are already 30-40 children in the village for each cohort in 2014 and 2015, when the school only has 20 places. The school has recently expanded just to cope with current demand – we’d need a new school and there was no plan for this.
We don’t mind some expansion of the village, but this plan was designed to pack in as many houses as possible onto the site with no thought of where their kids would go to school, where they’d shop for essentials and how they’d get about on tiny village roads. It was unsustainable. Plus the noise of planes landing almost 24/7 would have been unbearable.
>Can you clarify what “unsustainable development” is though?
Simple: ALL development the government and it’s cronies deem to be “sustainable development”!
Don’t worry about Simon McGrath, he’s just a free-market fanatic who would let them all do just what they want!
Tony
I should of course add – very good luck! I was the Liberal agent in 1966 in what was then the Knutsford constituency which included much of the present-day Tatton (also Wilmslow and Alderley Edge and stuff further south to Mow Cop). Our candidate was my noble friend Geoff Tordoff. We came second with about 23% from memory, to the Conservative caricature Sir Walter Bromley-Davenport.
Get stuck in!
@Tony Greaves – not at all a ‘free market fanatic’, just rather baffled by the fact that our party is on the one hand committed to building 300,000 new homes a year and on the other opposes people who actually want to build anything.
ClanMcould there are always lots of excellent reasons for opposing developments – thanks for the usual list. I am a bit baffled though by the one about aircraft noise – presumably people would be able to make a choice as to whether they want to put up with that, just a s people who currently live their do ?
@Simon McGrath – The problem is that the party (like many others) likes to hand wave and not commit to specific’s until someone puts something on the table. So it will gaily hand wave at building 300,000 new homes whilst avoiding specifying exactly where they should (or should not) be built other than with another wave of the hand, in the hope that such gesturing will win them votes. However, Mobberley and other places up and down the country, is where such political gesturing comes face-to-face with hard reality.
Roland,
Are you in favour of the party policy, or against?
Max – Against – the level of building demanded by the policy is totally daft and unsustainable under any metric. Also any one with any sense will realise that having a policy that benefits those who don’t already live in the UK and hence cannot vote for you, is verging on stupidity, particularly when that policy is at odds with teh wishes and esires of those living hte country and who are able to vote for you!
Simon McGrath wrote:
“just rather baffled by the fact that our party is on the one hand committed to building 300,000 new homes a year and on the other opposes people who actually want to build anything.”
The party is committed to the building of 300,000 new homes a year in the right places, not in the wrong places. So there are no grounds for puzzlement when the party opposes building houses on the Green Belt, or within the envelope of a historic village, or on ancient fields, or in a semi-natural ancient wood, or in positions where they destroy strategic views, etc.
In my own town, there is currently a building boom, and I applaud that. All this building is taking place on brownfield sites than have lain empty and idle often for decades, a bit like Midtown Detroit.
Thank you for the kind words of support guys, it’ll certainly be an interesting few months! Tatton’s an interesting constituency, in one respect incredibly blue, with plenty of small, wealthy Cheshire villages, but on the other hand has larger towns like Knutsford, Wilmslow and parts of Northwich that are much closer to the demographics where Lib Dems do well in the north, we’re next door to Cheadle and Hazel Grove for example.
@ Simon – your argument about choice is a valid one, and in fact what the developers said at the planning meeting! However, the planning process is meant to stop houses being built in inappropriate areas, whether its on a floodplain, contaminated land or somewhere with excessive noise. Its a public health issue more than anything, constant noise like this can have a serious effect on physical and mental health. The planes are incredibly low over the site, less than 100ft – you can read the numbers off the bottom of them as they fly over.
I’m all for sustainable development and that’s why councils need to get their local plans in place (Cheshire East have completely failed on this, which will be one of our key campaign messages). Building houses without thought to sustainability is only going to create problems for future generations to sort out.
Roland – I’m intrigued…does the current generation of young British people “not currently live in the UK”?
If that is our attitude towards young people wanting to try and get on the housing ladder/find somewhere affordable to live, it is no wonder so few are interested in voting for us.
Roland,
I disagree that this is daft. The ‘daft’ response would be to do nothing and pretend there isn’t a problem.
Gareth,
I wish you well and look forward to you becoming an MP so you can support our party policy of building 300,000 homes per year.
I didn’t realise that Wilmslow is still in Tatton! Is Lacey Green still solid Liberal territory?
Tony
Sesenco makes the entirely rational point that where he lives it has been possible to build new homes on brownfields sites. “..In my own town, there is currently a building boom, and I applaud that. All this building is taking place on brownfield sites than have lain empty and idle often for decades, a bit like Midtown Detroit.”
The same is true where I live, even though it is in North Kingston which is one of the most densely populated parts of this suburban borough. A former aircraft factory, derelict railway goods area and derelict former power station have over the last fifteen years given way to more than a thousand new homes. That is all within one ward in one London borough. There is still a former Gas Works site on which more homes could be provided along with a new much needed primary school. It does not take a lot of imagination or intelligence to be able to comprehend that a building programme of 300,000 homes per year is entirely achievable without concreting over the countryside.
In no time at all most property developers could identify 300 such brownfield sites across England; The ones they do not already own themselves are owned by Tesco or other retail developers. The MoD recently published a very helpful list of their own derelict sites which could be used for housing almost immediately. The Crown Estates (source of Prince Charles’ pocket money) also has an extensive list of properties. The Church of England owns more acres of land than it has weekly worshipers in its churches. There is absoutely no reason to build on green belt or agricultural land or land which is a useful amenity and lung for nearby cities or towns.
Those who claim not to be fanatics on this subject ought to try backing up their wild assertions with facts, if they can instead of throwing around insults like NIMBY.
My assumption is that because they have a semi-religious belief in the “free market” they do no worry themselves with facts or rational discussion. It is for them a matter of faith in their god Mammon.
Gareth arnold running for kent county council. I have absolutely no idea who you are even though you are from faversham. I tried looking online to see what I could find out about you and there was nothing I could find that would help me. Sorry I find it difficult to vote for you I do not have enough information here. Where can I go to find out more about your policies.