#SAVE DUDLEY PORT- STOP THE GARDEN CITY!

#mobilise, #galvanise #activise.

A vitally important consultation is now underway concerning the futures of all residents of Tividale and the Tipton area centred around Dudley Port. I cannot stress enough how important it is for residents who live in areas where new housing is proposed to have their say about their future wellbeing.

Many of these sites are not at all suitable for housing, and are either built on old toxic tips or situated right next to others. None of the people proposing these schemes in their ivory towers really care where housing is stuck- they just have responsibility for meeting targets set by bureaucrats in National and local Government who neither care nor live in any of the areas affected.

It is the quite disastrous EU open door policy and failure of The Blair Government and subsequent ones to stop it that has caused the shortfall in housing, the lack of services and the impossible task of meeting needs. This is not the fault of those who came here seeking a better life, but they like the existing longstanding community need to be educated about the dire tipping history in this area, and ensure they are not conned into believing that they are buying a “quality home” in picturesque surroundings.

Developers are greedy liars with plenty of money to use “environmental consultants” to push through their hair brained schemes. Planners talk of “visions” for areas, yet these paperweight pipe dreams in the case of the area known as “The fomer Duport’s Tip” – actually on the site of the former Rattlechain brickworks and situated to the East of Rattlechain lagoon, did not materialise over 30 years ago when The Black Country Development Corporation touted the area in the same terms of “transformation” as the current unelected quango’s propose.

WHO ARE “THE BLACK COUNTRY ENTERPRISE PARTNERSHIP”, WHO ARE “THE BLACK COUNTRY CONSORTIUM”, WHO ARE THE WEST MIDLANDS COMBINED AUTHORITY”, AND WHY SHOULD A PLANNING INSPECTOR BASED IN BRISTOL BE ABLE TO DETERMINE THE LANDSCAPE OF PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN AN AREA OVERPOPULATED ALREADY WHERE AS THOSE WHO BY THEIR OWN CHOICE FROM THE AFOREMENTIONED NON-ENTITIES LIVE IN SPLENDID RURAL ISOLATION THAT IS PROTECTED FROM “GREEN-BELT” DEVELOPMENT?

Why should the geographically distinct areas of Tipton and Oldbury be consumed and its green borders removed and cack handedly welded into one sprawling housing estate which may after what it is built on forthwith be known as just “OLD TIP“?

The document entitled “The Dudley port supplementary planning document” sits below something known as “The Black Country Core Strategy”- (yes they really make it easy to understand don’t they), which is an overarching document approved in 2011/12 which I gave a submission at the time.

Read this “Tale of Two Tips document below.

two tips

There is now a consultation review about this starting on 3rd July, and if you really want to endure the oppressive 100 plus page document, you can comment on that HERE. Please do, because local authorities/planners don’t want you to object to their scheming plans.

What the Dudley Port supplementary planning document missed out was the so called “SWOT” analysis. This stands for “Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.” I asked for this in a freedom of information request to Sandwell council.

It was revealed that several bodies met at the Hindu Temple in May concerning this scheme, yet no one from the local area, crucially residents whom it will affect were even invited to ask questions- questions which will be pretty bloody relevant to THEM when they realise the years of tipping activity and disruption that will affect the value of their homes and cause untold misery environmentally.

 

The SWOT analysis provides a very interesting insight into this whole scheme, and underlines what we already know regards the “Threats” to this nonsense house building “opportunities”. The threats are summarised but not fully elucidated, and revealing in that the Newcomen Drive proposals are financially not sound because of remediation constraints.

“LACK OF GAP FUNDING TO REMEDIATE LIMESTONE MINE HOUSING ACCOMODATION AT CONEYGREE”

What is not revealed in this threat is that the same land owner of this site also owns the area around the former rattlechain brickworks (“former Duport’s Tip”. Read about how “Duport Properties Limited” and “Birlee industrial Limited” operated on this site in the late seventies/early 80’s HERE.

Much disruption and what local residents of Gladstone Drive and surrounding streets described as “misery” occurred throughout the 1990’s with grandiose “reclamation” schemes” which facilitated the development of the former sewage works (now Callaghan and Wilson Drives) , and the extension of MacDonald Close in the furthest part away from the former “Duport’s Tip” area. Much controversy surrounds these developments, particularly the sewage works and how Barratt Homes did not tell buyers about Rattlechain lagoon. Barratt’s also built on the MacDonald Close development.

In terms of the current proposed sites, neither of these two schemes have produced ANY form of action within the last several years, and one has to ask WHY?

Is it acceptable  that someone can sit on land and wait for a tax payer money tree to come along and pay for site restoration/remediation that they themselves are clearly not willing or are financially unable to bring forward themselves, let alone “pay” for polluting it in the first place?

“CONTAMINATED LAND REMEDIATION COSTS”

All of this land would be classed as “contaminated” if it were brought forward for development because it would not be safe to live in such areas without remediation. I have touched on some of the issues surrounding the old brickworks site and especially the former so called “Duport’s tip”- an absolute disgrace that should never have happened because of the conman Sydney Sheldon who claimed to be a brick maker but only facilitated rubble tipping.

“INNAPROPRIATE DEVELOPMENT”

Who wants to live next to a gassing toxic waste lagoon classed as a “hazardous waste site” that still has yet to be remediated? Anyone? Does anyone want to risk their families health in the years to come when the outcomes of living next to this site on human health are currently not known?

During works by Mintworth in the 1990’s people were complaining about asthma on the Temple Way Estate being elevated by the amounts of foundry sand being churned up and spread. I will go into more detail on this in an upcoming blog post, but soil derived dust was something that was never dealt with sufficiently within the terms of the licence issued.

The lessons of history are crucial to understanding what this consultation is about because if you are clueless on the history of this area (as the compilers of this plan appear to be), then you are truly open to being exploited. Recent events which have made building control and planning matters international news have raised the spectre of how easily those at the top overlook so much regards future effects of their decisions. But it is not just the cladding of high rise buildings that needs re-evaluation, it is the foundations at the bottom and the land which it is built on that will affect people long into the future, and long after the greedy developers have left the scene.

The lessons of places such as Love Canal have not really been learned, and sticking half a metre of top soil over former tipping land does not make it “safe”. As has recently come to light in Walsall, this process of building on old contaminated land sites, deemed “acceptable” is going to have a very costly consequence for that authority and the people now living there.

HOW LITTLE SANDWELL HAS LEARNED FROM THIS.

PLEASE INFORM THE COUNCIL OF YOUR OBJECTIONS TO THIS SCHEME, AND IF YOU PREFER TO SEE THIS

INSTEAD OF YEARS OF THIS.

YOUR FUTURES ARE AT STAKE. MAKE YOUR VIEWS COUNT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.

#STOP “THE GARDEN CITY”.

….It’s just a dirty pity