Crisis in the Countryside

Is there a crisis in our countryside?

Over 43% of residents of the Borough live in the countryside yet only 1 in 10 new houses were built in our countryside between 1996 and 2008. The position is the same with jobs and shops. This is having a dramatic effect far beyond the price of houses in the rural areas. Families and communities are breaking up over the inability of our children and grandchildren to afford to buy in the villages they were brought up in, assuming they could find an increasingly rare job in the countryside!

No effort is being made to ensure that the services and facilities needed are provided.

If you are a pensioner in the rural areas the distance to travel to a doctor will already be a concern.

Your Council can do something about this, but chooses not to. You have a chance to do something about it by taking part in the consultation on the Local Development Framework (LDF). If you don't take part your silence will be deemed acquiescence and the problems of the last 12 years will be enhanced when settlement boundaries are stripped away from villages and any further development in smaller villages will be blocked.

This is serious. It doesn't just affect you. It affects your children and their children. Their chance to live near you, or get a job nearby. It affects our environment as people have to travel further to get jobs, shop and it even affects you if you live in the centre of Bury St Edmunds as the congestion and pollution builds up.

I call this a policy of Planning Blight!

If you don't take part you won't even be able to blame the politicians!

It may sound boring to make a comment on the LDF, but not doing so may have big consequences. You have until 5th January to make your views known to the Borough Council.