Coventry Council Con

The government has announced that at least half a million new houses need to built over the next twenty years to meet the demand for new homes and that around 40,000 of these will be in the Coventry area. I do not doubt that these houses are needed and I would not be surprised if that figure is a conservative one.

Of course, nobody will want a large new housing estate built in their back yard, but other than building in the North Sea, just about everywhere else is in someone’s back yard. So conceding the inevitability that there is going to be a number of large new housing projects in this area. As we are supposedly in a period of consultation I have tried to discover just how much extra infrastructure will also be built to accompany these projects. By infrastructure, I mean –

Roads
Schools
Nurseries
Doctor’s surgeries
Dental practices
Facilities for children & teenagers
Facilities for the elderly
Shops
Sports and leisure
Transport
Jobs

Nobody at the City Council has been able to tell me which, if any of the above will also be built to support these large projects. So, in order to get some idea of what we may expect I have found out what extra infrastructure has been provided to accompany the 500+ house estate which is now nearing completion at the site of the Massey Fergusson factory in Banner Lane and it is not a very encouraging prospect.

Roads – None other than those on the site, but they have agreed to put traffic calming measures in Broad Lane. (I thought that I was being sarcastic when I said that they would probably build the speed humps first!)
Schools - The Developer, not the council, has to make one off donations totalling £250,000 to schools or educational projects within a two mile radius of the site. There could possibly be 250 extra children in the area resulting in the Banner Brook estate so this figure is poultry.
Nurseries - None
Doctor’s surgeries - None
Dental practices - None
Facilities for children & teenagers - None
Facilities for the elderly - None
Shops – Small 1400 sq metre in total.
Sports and leisure – None above that which was already there.
Transport – Two extra bus pull-ins
Jobs – The developer must market the tower to let for offices etc.
So judging by this the answer to the question regarding what extra infrastructure will accompany future large housing projects, the answer seems to be, ‘very little’.

One would have though that local authorities would have learned some lessons about the need to support such schemes with quality infrastructure, but it seems that Coventry City Council are either out of touch with the needs of Coventry people or to arrogant and dictatorial to care what we want.