Housing & Homelessness

Brighton Housing Trust is taking part in a petition, organised nationally by Shelter, to press the governement to take real action to provide more desperately needed social housing in the South East.

Here I explore some of the issues around the problem here in Brighton. The article is a couple of years old, but unfortunately still relevant.

Forty-Seven Per Cent

Cycling in Brighton & Hove has increased by 47% since 2000, so says the city council. That's impressive. It's good to have the statistic but it's easy to confirm anecdotally just by looking around you. Yip, there are many more cyclists about the city.

There are two factors at work here. The pull: the council has been developing cycling facilities for many years now - admittedly under the constant pressure of very active cycling pressure groups. And just recently the city was chosen as a National Exemplar Cycling Demonstration Town 2005 - 2008 (a bit of a mouthful) by the Dept. of Transport and will therefore have a £3 million pound cycling investment package to spend over the next three years.

The push: another statistic: in 1992/94 48% of 17-20 year olds had a driving licence; in 2004 that had fallen to 26%. The rising costs of learning to drive, and rise and rise in the size of student loans must account for a large part of this change.

What a shame then the Southern Rail is to enforce cycle restrictions on the London to Brighton service, banning bikes between 7am and 10am and between 4pm and 7pm on weekdays.

Admittedly folding bikes will still be allowed to travel at all times.

It's not too unreasonable to think that a regular London commuter should invest in a folding bike. At least, I don't thnk so.

Pity The Poor Councillor

So last Thursday the city council voted to accept reports on the latest stage in the stately progress of its Waste Local Plan which continues to support the building of a waste incinerator on a vacant brownfield site in Newhaven.

Environmental campaigners and residents opposed to having the plant in their backyard lobbied the council meeting - with no success.

Environmental pressure groups, such as Friends of the Earth, claim that incineration isn't just bad but is unnecessary, claiming that recycling rates of 60, 70 and even 80% are possible. Maybe in theory, maybe, maybe, but not within the realms of possibility of any single local council in the UK today.

The local council's primary role is to dispose of waste - which is, of course, a health hazard. It has no control over its production in the first place. The only way 80% recycling rates could possibility be achieved would be if the manufactured products which consumers buy were really designed to be recycled. A newspaper is not designed to be recycled even though it can be recycled - at great expense, both financially and environmentally.

Those who bring products to the marketplace should have to demonstrate the full life cycle costs of the product, not just the costs of production but also the costs of disposal. By disposal I mean returning the product to an environmentally neutral state - that is, non-damaging to the environment. This would require legislation and planning at both national and international governmental levels.

Today China is fast becoming the 21st. century's workshop of the world. The cost to us of her products is cheap; the cost to China's environment is dear.

Pity the poor councillor who has to make decisions about waste management when the present government, like all previous governments, is so weak and spineless on environmental matters. I had once hoped for better, but after eight years in office, only the very naïve would continue to hope for any radical change of direction or pace.

Why only last week in parliament environment minister, Ben Bradshaw, rose to the defence of the plastic shopping bag, which was banned in Ireland three years ago!

Marina Tower

The 40 storey Marina tower that was rejected recently by the city council's planning committee has attracted opposition primarily because of its height which opponents claim contravenes the original consent for the Marina development. The council's planning officers who supported the application, after amendment by the developers, don't think so, but be that as it may.

It's just a little odd that such an exposed residential development is being proposed (right on the harbour arm) when the council only a short distance away at the Undercliff Walk is spending millions of pounds to reinforce the seawall big time, at least in part because of fears of climate change, rising seawater levels, and therefore bigger storm damage on the coast.

I was curious to see what the application says about this long term threat - if anything - but when I tried to download it (and it's great that the link is there on the council's website) what I got was a very long doc in what seemed to be as Asian script!

It's not the first time this has happened with a Word download from the council's website - some sort of techie problem which I hope can be resolved.

To Burn or Not To burn

Today the Argus published the first artist illustrations of the proposed waste incinerator to be sited in Newhaven together with the news that the Environment Agency is seeking the closure of the two remaining landfill sites a year earlier than the councils and their waste contractors had expected.

With no new landfill capacity in sight and with the incinerator still at the planning stage, Brighton and East Sussex may well have to export their waste at great expense to Northamptonshire.

This is no surprise since the landfill site contractors and their council clients have been trying to squeeze more and more capacity out of existing landfill sites for many years.

The Environment Agency has had enough, because of increased ground water pollution.

I will return to this issue in greater detail another time.