There was an old saying that the only things you could be sure of in life were Taxes and Death. Well of course that’s still true in many ways but in the case of your local councilors there’s another, similarly downbeat outlook.
That is that as a councillor you can always be sure of the need and pressure for housing and along with that demand an ever-decreasing funding for services.
This has been the same for councils up and down the country for the last decade. It's been a constant in my time as a council leader and will be for the leaders and the councillors of the future.
So how do we address it? We can just keep fighting housing proposals and we may win some and we will lose some. That doesn’t really address the number of people needing social housing or affordable rent housing in the same way that it doesn’t allow people who are able to buy houses not to have to buy them at hugely inflated cost due to their rarity. Villages and towns die and while the Forest is beautiful and picturesque, it's very soul , the communities that breathe air into it disappear.
And while within this rambling we won’t go into the chronic lack of infrastructure provided by various governments and lead authorities over the years, what about facilities that people need and want just to make life that little bit better?
In particular my thoughts , because of my own upbringing I suppose, turn to our leisure and recreation provision. I’ve said many times that sports clubs bring communities together. I believe that our rugby . cricket and football clubs allow our young people to learn team building, enhance character and instills a pride of place that otherwise wouldn’t be there .
Add into the mix all the different classes, the swimming clubs, the dance classes , the exercise classes, the athletics clubs. The impact on health and wellbeing, obesity issues and bringing people together is only just being truly measured. Its impact will clearly be shown to be huge.
At some point decades ago, someone thought it was a great idea to place the facilities needed for such community engagement on sites owned then by the education authority. While this worked for a while, as we are in the age of Academies and College ownership of those education sites its now an issue. That’s because while your local council may own the buildings in some cases, they don’t own the land they sit on. Also, any joint use or access agreements may have gone out the window with the change of ownership. This presents a financial issue because , with finance to councils being cut so much, every penny spent is rightly scrutinised. Its difficult to justify spending huge sums on facilities that the council either doesn’t own or potentially could be stopped from accessing overnight.
We know that our leisure facilities need updating, they need modernising , they need improvements, and they need to be offered to our communities and schools for the use of everyone, not a select few. I'll go further.
We need top quality facilities.
Why shouldn't we have the Forest of Dean athletics centre, The Forest of Dean swimming centre, A Forest of Dean centre for football for rugby, quality indoor cricket nets and the like.?
I'll add community spaces , cafes, a theatre, outdoor seated stadia. Why shouldn’t the Forest have what other areas have? Why should anyone have to leave a district this size with four towns to find the facility they wish to use. They simply shouldn’t have to. Our Kids, our communities deserve the same as those in other areas.But convincing council to spend literally millions of pounds on these sites, once the ownership and access background is known , is going to be a hard ask and that’s before you bring political BS into the mix.
So do we fight all housing and only allow what we like the look of and do we allow all our leisure facilities to crumble to dust, and hope and pray that neighbouring districts might cater for our young people and our communities? Not for me, and an increasing number of my colleagues , certainly those in cabinet, we aspire to more for the Forest of Dean.
But its going to take some kahunas, it’s a bit of a brave call, especially in election year and its something that I’ve tried to introduce into the local plan discussions.That being that there can be a deal for the community and for our local developers.
Community led development. And its development that the community gets behind because it can deliver the facilities that the community needs.All within planning laws and regulations but innovative and progressive.
We literally must deliver thousands of new-built houses in the next decades. We can't change that , it's no good anyone telling you otherwise.Councils don’t have the money to deliver those high-quality facilities that are needed.
So, if a developer is sitting on a site that he can deliver two maybe three hundred new homes, instead of us collectively sucking air through our teeth, why don’t we say to Mr or Mrs Developer, ok work with us to make it as good a development as possible for those living nearby but also this town needs a new swimming pool.
They might work with the Council to deliver something special.If a developer wants to build an estate in Lydney, could the council not work with them to build Lydney new football pitches or Rugby pitches, modern and vibrant.
If one of Cinderford's many developers want to build houses, and the village it’s building in needs a new hall, a football pitch or some changing rooms ,surely there are conversations to be had.
Indeed, we can go further, with the brilliant education and training facilities opened and coming to the Forest in recent years, why can’t the council partner up with these organisations and communities to build, to staff and to even manage such facilities?
We are so fortunate that we fought to own Five Acres in Coleford and that the Levelling up fund came at the right time. There we can own it, invest in it and provide quality services. We can’t currently do that on our other sites to the extent that we want to.
Going forward , I will want us to really examine our entire leisure offering. The Forest of Dean deserves the highest quality, usable and sustainable facilities.We also must accept there’s a need for housing, for me there’s an opportunity to link the two .
Partnership working with communities , businesses and developers. Sponsorship , community levy call it what you like the most important thing is that we need to have honest conversations and accept that to get the good stuff there may need to be some pain.
But doing it together, with the communities and with local developers and organisations who share our passions, our pride, and our aspirations, that’s the way the Forest should go.
I think we can do it and with another spell at the helm its a direction I want to be heading !
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