What are Cotswold District Council up to now!
A few weeks ago CDC ran a ‘Planning for Real’ event in Moreton, involving a pre-selected list of attendees (some did not even live in Moreton or surrounding villages.) They’ve since published this lovely video, (only available on Facebook though they published a written update here) which paints a biased picture to say the least.
Very little mention is made of the very many concerns raised, though CDC seems very keen to push it’s latest slogan – ‘infrastructure first development’.
We must bust this ‘infrastructure first development’ myth.
It sounds great, and no doubt the recently hired £250,000 a year PR consultants worked very hard to come up with it, but it is total nonsense. CDC is verging on bankruptcy, Joe Harris has said so himself – they have no money to build anything and often lack the legal power to build any of the infrastructure that they talk about. The only way there will be any infrastructure is if CDC force thousands and thousands of homes onto Moreton. The only way there will be any infrastructure is if CDC force thousands and thousands of homes onto Moreton and take money from developers to pay for the infrastructure. At best, it will be ‘infrastructure alongside development’ – no developer will simply hand money to a council in advance – and this assumes we can trust CDC to hold developers to account. CDC’s incompetence has seen them fail to do this in the past. This is true for developments that are frankly tiny compared to what they suggest putting in Moreton – they simply cannot be trusted.
CDCs first big slogan ‘nothing is decided’ – is generally now considered to be completely false. So on we go to the next one – ‘infrastructure first development’
Moreton Against Over Development will continue fighting to hold CDC to account, and campaigning for these awful plans to be scrapped and redrawn in a fairer and more equitable way.
Moreton Against Over Development 