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Thursday 30 June 2016


THE OVERVIEW AND SCRUTINY COMMITTEE.

The SDC Overview and Scrutiny committee met last Tuesday, 28th June, to pose questions about the proposal for a New Town in and around Sellindge. Lympne and Westenhanger.
This time chaired by Claire Jeffreys (Lab) it was virtually a re-run of the Cabinet meeting of the 8th June with Susan Priest in auto mode extolling the virtues to residents and businesses alike with open spaces and companies gagging to get on board setting up businesses within the area. We were even treated to the old chestnut of 'By having Otterpool New Town, all the other developments (Waste site, Wind turbines and so forth) would be sidelined' or words to that effect.

First up with a few points was Councillor Michael Lyons (Con) asking where on earth are these companies going to come from that would like to set up a business here when units are lying empty in the Links industrial estate? He went on to ask where will doctors be coming from when Kent is crying out for doctors at the moment. Why so many houses where there is mention of overspill from London. Where is the infrastructure? Councillor Lyons concluded that Local Parish Councils should be listened to, saying that Lympne Parish Council have very competent councillors within their ranks and know exactly what they want.

Councillor Clive Goddard (Con) briefly spoke saying that it was fantastic, a great opportunity, wonderful.
Councillor Ann Berry (Con) admitted to living on Folkestone Golf course and said change was inevitable.
Councillors Frank McKenna and Ian Meyers (both UKIP) spoke in the same vein of adopting brownfield sites as opposed to building over good arable land and required clarity over the numbers of houses that were actually being proposed. 1500, 6,000, 10,000 or 12,000.

The pretence of democracy or protocol in action by SDC was gut churning for residents sitting in public gallery as the obvious agenda is to push through a New Town development at any cost to the environment or the residents way of rural/village life. Exasperated by comments from Priest about local involvement at an early stage, residents rightly became vocal with the Chair asking the gallery to be quiet.

All in all, just as we expected, with the inner cabal at Shepway moving further along the path of securing government funding to exploit the possibility of changing part of the Shepway landscape forever.                         

S&DRA
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