The Government's insistence on building more and more houses seems to have reached epidemic proportions and nothing will stop them. They are riding roughshod over local communities and developers are laughing all the way to the bank.
Between 2001 and 2011, the population of our village increased by around 500. Now we have 1,196 additional houses either built or planned. It doesn't take a genius to realise that will push the population up by over 4,000 (and more if you assume four people per household). In addition it will bring another 2,000 vehicles.
But it's not that which has annoyed so many people. One of the developers used less land than they expected in building one of the phases of development. So what did they do when they found this out? Yes they slammed in a separate application for planning permission for another 200 houses.
Now here we go with the maths again. Say it costs £100,000 to build a house and I'm sure it's probably a lot less and the house is sold for £300,000 that's a profit of £200,000 per house. That works out at £40 million. And the village has been offered a paltry £150,000 for help in medical funding. As someone said that will hardly employ one addition GP. It certainly won't build a new surgery and is probably of no earthly use to the existing surgery.
Facilities in our village are at bursting point, but obviously this fact is ignored when it comes to granting planning applications. Hethersett Surgery is in serious trouble. It can't cope with the present number of residents so how on earth will it cope with thousands more?
Couldn't help but notice that our nearest Town Wymondham has three surgeries. I assume that when they had a population of 10,000 they had three. Now we will soon be approaching this number but will still only have one.
But the thing that really gets me is the way democracy works at the moment and it's certainly not democratic. Our three district councillors are against the proposed 200 new houses, our county councillor is against it, the parish council is unanimously against it and hundreds of residents are against it, but five South Norfolk councillors gave it the go-ahead, totally ignoring an impassioned plea by one of our District Councillors Phil Hardy for no more development until facilities are improved. One of his suggestions was no more than 20 houses until a new surgery/medical centre is built, but this fell on deaf ears amongst councillors who I am sure had already made their mind up.
I have to be fair though as two of the panel voted against the extra 200. They were another Hethersett representative on South Norfolk Council David Bills and a Liberal Democrat from Wymondham Julian Halls.
The other three - Graham Minshull, Lisa Neal and Vic Thomson saw the application through. These are the very people that should be fighting on behalf of South Norfolk residents for improved facilities and not selling down the river.
Phil Hardy told me he was angry with the decision and was considering the next steps. I am angry that essentially three people can heap misery on so many without any real consideration about the effect of their actions.
The last time I can remember anything like this happening was during the Winter of Discontent of 1978/1979 and the year when all the lights went out which was I believe the early 1970s.
I am sure this is a topic I will return to many times in future blogs.