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The main flaw in your plan is that there is no such thing as road tax. The use of public highways is completely free and not subject to any taxes regardless of whether you use a self powered vehicle or an internal combustion one.
The real solution to cyclists on pavements is for the law to be upheld. It is illegal to cycle on the pavement so people who do should be fined.
I for one won’t be signing the petition.
Firstly I’m not for fracking but I’m not against it either. But I certainly don’t want my power tofail, so we have to find some way of generating it.
Secondly coalbed methane isn’t quite the same thing as fracking, which as I understand it the latter is the process for extracting shale gas.
Thirdly the petition will achieve exactly nothing. Wrexham has no legal authority to declare itself a frack free area. Unless the UK government bans it or heavily restricts where it can take place there won’t be a thing anyone here can do to stop it.
I personally dont think the NHS should have been devolved, at least not in the way it was. But Id go further, I dont think the NHS in its current form is the best model of healthcare for Britain. I.e a centrally planned nationalised industry.
We are told the NHS is the envy of the world. It isnt, nobody is copying it. Ireland are reforming their healthcare system at the moment. They arent creating an Irish NHS. They are adopting a similar system of universal health insurance to the Dutch.
The NHS is actually poorly understood by the popluation at large. A lot of people assume that National Insurance pays for it. By and large it doesnt, general taxation does. So unlike insurance or social (i.e income based) insurance based syatems the true cost of it is hidden for the taxpayer.
There is no nationally agreed list of procedures and treatments the government ‘insures’ the population for. There is also a pathological resistance (amongst many politicians at least) against patients having taxpayer funded treatment anywhere other than an NHS run facility. We could learn a lot from France, Netherlands and Germany.
There is no where in the UK where there is one head of education (or any other dept for that matter) doing the job that 22 in Wales. The largest single local authority in the UK (and Europe for that matter) is Birmingham City Council – serving just over 1m people. And it is performing that poorly it narrowly missed being broken up into 3-4 smaller boroughs.
A smaller number of LAs doesnt necessarily mean more efficiency. It can lead to diseconomies of scale. What people are overlooking is that fewer LAs gives the individual citizen LESS power and influence. Conversely it gives the Welsh Government MORE power. So forget localism (which hasnt come to Wales despite 15 years of devolution). Quite the opposite is happening. The logical conclusion of the current direction of travel is 6 LAs in 20yrs time, 3 in 20yrs after then none at all.
The problem isnt the number of LAs (the Republic of Ireland has 31) but the division of functions. It is also about proper local government (i.e autonomy) rather than local administration of central targets as we have now.
You are also forgetting that Clwyd had two tiers consisting of a county council (Clwyd) and district councils (e.g Wrexham Maelor Borough). If local government in Wales is reorganised it will result in larger and potentially quite remote unitary councils.
Surely it is rather patronising to assume that people from Llay or elsewhere in Wrexham won’t be able to buy a house on the site if the development happens. That suggests everyone in Wrexham is poor and everyone who moves into the area is rich and does so at the expense of local people. Anyway developers arent fussy who they sell to as long they make a sale.
What is wrong with people coming from outside of the borough to live in the area. I know the nationalists hate English people moving into the area (ill admit I am one of those horrible English people who bought a house that a nice Welsh family could have lived in).
I understand the concerns about schools and GPs but if permission for 300+ homes is granted, it isnt as if the houses and extra people turn up over night. A develppment of that size can take 5-10 years to complete. Just look at the Redrow etc development on Ruthin Road.
Perhaps new houses will provide an opportunity for local people to return to the area who work elsewhere but currently also live out of the area. Or perhaps people who live elsewhere in North Wales and work in Chester or Manchester or Liverpool but are sick of the commute choose to live closer. For the nationalistsc- this could mean Welsh speakers moving into the area. It also is an opportunity for people living in houses in the area that are no longer suitable for them (perhaps too small) to move into a new larger house and free up smaller houses for families that need them.
Developments do bring benefits. Its possible that on the back of a large development going ahead someone will want to invest in opening more shops. Or the extra spending power in the area could support existing shops and businesses and perhaps provide incentives for bus companies to offer better or new services. There will be construction jobs for years.
And just returning to whether houses are needed. The 5 year land supply is calculated by looking at the average number of houses built in Wrexham over the past 5 years. Say 300 per year then over the next 5 years there has to be land available for 1500 new houses to be built. If there is only land for 900 then Wrexham only has a 3 year land supply. So the number of new houses currently for sale in the area is irrelevant.
The fact some houses on the market arent selling doesnt mean there isnt a need for extra houses. Other factors could be at play. Such as the seller asking too much for the house or legal complications etc etc.
So if an application for this site fails will you (those who live in Llay) be writing objection letters when a housing development is proposed in, say, Rossett or Gresford or on the outskirts of Wrexham? Because if it is refused the Council will still have a shortage of land for development. If it isnt here it will be somewhere else. No doubt the people who live somewhere else will consider the land opposite them unsuitable for a long list of reasons.
1. Wrexham has a shortage of housing based on the way Welsh government require it to be measured in planning policy. FACT.
2. The Council can, and do, require contributions towards additional school places, road junctions, open space and affordable homes. FACT.
3. The Council and a planning inspector at appeal are not obliged to refuse permission even if there are huge numbers of objection. FACT.
4. Over the next few years lots of houses will be built on greenfield sites in Wrexham. FACT.
But the Council has no LDP, it’s current plan is out of date and the Lly site and many other parts of the borough are NOT green barrier (to use the WCBC term). If Wrexham had an LDP then there would be more certainty where houses would be built or not. But it doesnt. If it had a 5 year supply then greenfield sites would stand little chance of getting permission, but it doesn’t. Even if the Council refuse planning permission if people propose to build on greenfield sites then some of the development will happen anyway because some appeals will be successful. Although Councils and planning inspectors have to take account of local opinion, they are given very clear instructions by Welsh government that permission shouldnt be refused just because there are objections. I am afraid that is a fact.
The number of houses for sale has nothing to do with whether there is a shortage of houses or not. It is Welsh planning policy. If you read Welsh national policy you will see that, just as in England, Councils have to maintain a 5 year supply of land for housing. There are annual reviews that assess the actual supply. These reviews are on the Council’s website. If you read the most recent one, once you get your head around the figures you will see that Wrexham has quite a bit less than a 5 year supply – it is around 3 years. What that means, in short, is that not enough sites are being granted planning permission for housing. This isnt the Council’s fault because they can only deal with applications as they come in.
As for brownfield sites, where would you suggest people build in Wrexham? In the middle of Llay industrial estate, there is vacant land there. But who’d want to live there. The only real option for Wrexham now is to allow building on greenfield sites. This is unfortunate but true. If the Llay site is unsuccesful, it wont end there. Some other fields will be built on.
