Last Tuesday night I was forty feet
up a wall in Stopsley. This is not normally a situation I find myself in. I'd been persuaded to try the climbing wall at the sports centre (this meant I did have a rope attached to me luckily). "Wall climbing is the fastest growing sport in the UK," someone there told me. Given that childhood obesity in Luton is a third above the national average, and adult obesity figures here not great either, we should be encouraging this and other sports as much as possible. Climbing's also just a lot of fun (it helps if you don't look down!).
Crazy then to hear from one of the climbers that the Council's consultation meeting about the replacement sports centre they're building apparently won't have a climbing wall. "That's just typical of this Council," he said. Now I think there are undoubtedly a lot of good people, staff and Councillors, doing a lot of good work at the Council. But it's abundantly clear that
planning -- the "p" word that is inspiring so much anger locally when it comes to housing and more, isn't working for many Lutonians. I set out last week to begin finding out more...
I started the week meeting a representative from the
East of England Development Agency (EEDA). You may not necessarily have heard of them, but they play a really important role in Luton's economic development. They fund major projects to build the town and create jobs, including the Butterfield Green business park (where my brother has a small business) and the Carnival Arts Centre.
The lady from EEDA was very helpful and they clearly have a genuine interest in Luton. But they are hampered by two things: as a regional body they're quite far removed from daily life in Luton, and they don't seem to have a strategy that targets places that need development most (I think there's a good case for prioritising Luton over Cambridge, which is doing well by itself).
You can do a lot to make them more accountable to local people -- our Council is supposed to be the bridge but I don't think that's enough (nor do I think the Tories' plans to simply get rid of regional authorities and give all the power to the Council would work either). We need some kind of regional planning -- it's just daft not to have it, you can't do everything town by town with each Council fighting for their backyard, we'll never get anything done. But we do need to change the regions: I don't think it makes sense for Luton to be lumped into the bottom corner of the East of England when we're different from towns like Cambridge and Peterborough and rural areas.
But these are bureaucratic changes. What we really need is a change in culture in how planning and development is done. It's got to be done with local people, for local people and by local people. Planning should involve Lutonians from the beginning, spending should be much more accountable, publicly funded construction work should go to local firms wherever possible. I believe it's possible to do this much better, to move from 'consultations' to really engaging local people, so people are part of planning not just when they feel they need to complain.
We also need a national and regional strategy that focuses on Luton, and places like it, that urgently need more development. We have above average unemployment and parts of the town are still some of the most deprived in the country. Not enough has been done by Labour and I don't believe in the Conservatives born-again conversion to "helping the poor". We need to reverse the inequalities in our society that have grown under both the Tories and Labour -- in the twenty-first century, in a wealthy country like ours, no-one should be left behind. Least of all Luton. We will all benefit if more people in our town can prosper. I'll be quizzing EEDA again this week about how much priority Luton is getting at their annual meeting... interesting to hear that amongst the many towns represented, no-one from Luton Borough Council has registered.
Up at the
airport there was a more positive story about their plans for expansion and increasing numbers of jobs for people in Luton in the long-term (they're being hit by the recession right now, but are optimistic about coming out of it). This is great news for us. They also want to do it within the existing land they have and not build on the greenbelt, which is good news for everyone. I need to find out more about how the expansion plans will affect local residents concerned about noise in particular.
Very interesting to hear a little-known local fact... the airport's revenue that goes to the Council (about £18m last year) basically pays for much of Luton's cultural programme.
We talked about the wider environmental cost of the airport too, an issue I feel strongly about. They have been making some inroads to reducing the energy use of their buildings (which keeps costs down so it's good for everyone). Their real focus is the impact of people travelling to/from the airport to catch their flight, which is two-thirds of their emissions (if you count the flights themselves separately). In all of this, it was clear that more support is needed from government -- apparently it's dropped off, which is crazy. That's the kind of forward-thinking planning (it's that word again!) that we should be doing.
