Living in an area with a rapidly changing identity made up of a City region and an ancient County we will be seen as an area to experiment with by the current Government.
Some of us more elderly laymen can remember the Thatcher and Norman Tebbut eras and how people from this area were used for the ‘get on yer bike’ experiments and we know how close this Government is to that historic way of thinking.
As a nation moving rapidly towards isolation from our neighbours, to produce enough food to feed us all this current Government needs to move many landowners from being Euro supported agriculturalists over to mass producing horticulturalists, but to do that they need a ready supply of cheap labour to encourage the farming squires to embrace the new economy.
Boris Johnson probably believes he will will get that labour market fixed in using Hong Kong residents escaping the pressure to conform being exerted by mainland China, but we must remember that if that is his plan up to five million people will need places to live.
Dominic Cummings has been working on the post Brexit changes to planning law required to implement such a plan. Under his dream it will be easier to replace existing buildings and construct upwards. Greenbelts will also be exposed to change through the adoption of a zonal planning system and it will become the norm to change the designation of property from Commercial to Residential if need exists.
Need does exist and it exists everywhere, Shelter tell us that one million people are currently in need of suitable housing and at least 300,000 new social homes are needed before the current administration leaves office to ensure a standstill situation, leaving new residents and current displaced families in exactly the same position as when this Government arrived.
To access funds to house those in greatest need Authorities need to know where that need is. It will be a rapidly growing need way in excess of anything we have known over the last 35yrs as the expected recession arrives with a wave of the governments right hand and the protection of furlough turns to universal credit.
As we all know poverty and homelessness leads to rising crime rates and both will increase rapidly over the coming months.
Therefore we the laymen believe that the mapping of poverty to access funds needs to be joint effort from the PCC and the North of Tyne Mayor and has to start today. It needs to map those in the poverty trap and those close to it so that Town and Country planners can work to locate sites and produce the very flexible housing plans for the future to assist in where the new horticulture units housing and transport links to serve horticulture need to be placed with the A1 and A69 corridors being easy Government targets for both.
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