Over 9000 jobs, but for whom?

Homes?  Should they have been built here?

I am indebted to my colleague Brian Riley who has written today on his blog about the Babergh Development Framework consultation event at Hadleigh yesterday evening.

Of particular interest was a question about the vast number of jobs that the plan envisages being 'created' in Babergh over the next 20 years.  I quote:

'One of the anomalies thrown up in the briefing was that we are providing for about 9,700 new jobs in Babergh by 2031. The question was asked how come we are creating four new jobs for every home to be built. We were told that the figures were not directly comparative – but by pressing the point we were told that some of the jobs were to be created on the Ipswich fringe for Ipswich people, since there was a shortage of land for job creation in Ipswich. The reason for this shortage is because Ipswich had encouraged businesses to move outside their boundaries to be replaced by housing. Businesses bring no direct monetary benefit to the local authorities – instead it goes  to the Central Government and is then redistributed. So where is the logic in providing for jobs which have no direct benefit to our tax payers and which instead leave us with the pollution and other costs associated with providing business infrastructure. We were later told that some of the 9,700 jobs were associated with previously approved planning applications. However the underlying questions were not answered – instead we were told that it is not a simple as that. Fortunately/unfortunately we ran out of time before simple answers could be provided.

For more information see http://www.babergh.gov.uk/Babergh/Home/Planning+and+Building+Control/Local+Development+Framework/

Perhaps those going along to the equivalent event in Acton tomorrow evening might ask some questions about this?

The only point that I would make is that Brian is right about Business Rates as things stand at present. If however the Government's proposals to allow local authorities to keep new business rates generated become a reality this could be a nice windfall for the council.  However, the proposals are not at all straightforward and there is a high level of uncertainty with regard to how they will finally be implemented.

Also, to the extent that the jobs are filled by Babergh residents, this would reduce the 'commuting out problem' that seems to worry some people so much.

To read more from Brian go to his blog (A better way for Hadleigh or 'abwfh')

http://abwfh.com