Press Releases for 2005
LABOUR TURNS ON THE COUNTRYSIDE - GOVERNMENT SUPPORTS MORE OUT OF TOWN DEVELOPMENTS
24th March 2005Dr Hazel Dawe, Green Party Candidate for Folkestone and Hythe and Kent Green Party's Campaigns Officer, has condemned the Government's U-turn on out of town shopping developments(1). For a period of 12 years, Government planning guidance was unsympathetic to more out of town shopping developments. They were seen as generating traffic and congestion - often on the fringes of urban areas - and consuming greenfield sites best left to agriculture and countryside uses. Dr Hazel Dawe comments:
"What could be worse than dumping large out of town centres on Kent's countryside? Is it not bad enough that new housing being built in such places is priced well beyond the reach of many Kent residents? Kent's coastal town centres have picked themselves up after the difficult period of the 1980s and early 1990s, and have become more attractive places to live and work in. Folkestone and Hythe reflect this, as does regenerated Ramsgate and Margate. Now, the Labour Government wants to damage this regeneration by allowing more out of town developments that will suffocate existing town centres. A single new, average-sized supermarket will take more than 270 jobs from the local area in which it is established in its first five years of trading. Other out of town shopping developments may well have the same type of effect. Research also shows that an extra £50,000 in turnover for a small business will create one more job. But chain stores need £250,000 of extra turnover, on average, to add one extra job" (2).
"We do not need out of town developments which destroy jobs and the environment anywhere in Kent. The hopes of local people running small and medium-sized enterprises depend upon our local planning authorities being tough with out of town shopping developers."
ENDS c 299 words
FURTHER INFORMATION: Dr Hazel Dawe on 01233 645167 or 07747 014487. Contact address as above.
Notes: 1. Decision by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott with support from Keith Hill, Planning Minister. (Guardian, 22nd March 2005).
2. Research performed by the New Economic Foundation.
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