UNITE VIEWPOINT... CAN YOU SMELL THE.....


I’ll start as I always do by hop- ing that I find you well, considering all the adverse factors facing us as a trade at the moment.


This month’s article follows hot on the heels of last month’s feature on ‘electric’ (or not as the case may be) vehicles and the associat- ed social exclusions being foisted by many local authorities, all in the name of ‘air quali- ty’.


In terms of my title for this article, I’d like to be able to say that the next word is... ‘coffee’, but sadly the word you are looking for my friend is the excrement of a male cow – i.e. B.S.!


Before we get down to business, it would be remiss of me not to refer at least in passing, to the recently released DfT ‘Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Standards’. I’ll leave the detailed dissection to others save for me saying that throughout the document I found numerous references to the safety and security of others, yet a distinct lack of reference(s) to the safety or security of the cab trade itself! What should we read into this (or as the cool kids say these days, what is the take-away)? Well, at best I think it sends us a real and tangible signal as to how little we are valued by those who hold the power, both locally and nationally!


I will no doubt return to this in more detail at a later date, but for now we have some- thing infinitely more important to discuss.


AIR QUALITY DEBATE


A long time ago I promised you an article that takes the pollution and air quality debate apart, well here we are...


I claim no particular expertise in the moni- toring of air quality, but what I do have in abundance, is common sense and the power of logical reasoning. For I believe that one of the most important things in the whole “Clean Air” argument is actually accepting how we got to where we are currently. With- out this acceptance, how on earth can this issue ever be cleaned up? – pardon the pun. Those in authority will merely continue wasting their time and our money! Sadly, doesn’t that phrase sound familiar...?


How did we get to this point???


Well the answer to that is almost certainly through the irresponsible past actions of


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and decisions by the very same local authorities who now seek to blame every- one else for the current poor ‘air quality’ mess. Those local authority planning com- mittees who made decisions based upon the whiff of developers’ money and other fallacious offers of investment(s), rather than safeguarding the requirements and onward protection of the local area and the established local community.


In many cases, there was the offer of a mythical percentage of social housing that never seemed to materialise at the originally promised level and various other local investment sweeteners provided to ease and “grease” planning applications. In the vast majority of cases, the existing local infrastructure of roads and amenities were never upgraded to cope with the expansion decisions made by Councils. There was little mitigation made to support the new devel- opments or even in some cases to ensure that they were actually built in the right area. Specifically, no account was made for actual room to move around?


OVERPOPULATION


Principally, there were no extra roads or road capacity provided in order to cope with the obvious increase in traffic that would be spawned by the developments from the existing and perhaps more impor- tantly, the new community.


Most local councils have collectively allowed a policy of mass overpopulation. With this comes extra people and in turn, extra traffic – that’s just common sense – isn’t it? But all this ‘common sense’ seems to have passed the local authorities by.


Talking locally, well locally to me, take Brighton & Hove as a case in point. Brighton & Hove has recently become the overspill area for London commuters who previously overpopulated London and have now flocked to Brighton and the South Coast in order to practice the same policy of over- population that previously wrecked London and decimated its air quality.


The city council in Brighton has allowed anything and everything that could be mis- appropriated to housing to have its use changed. They have also allowed wholesale expansions of properties, whether existing dwellings or in some cases, even previous ‘lock up’ garages have been misappropriat- ed to accommodation. Whilst this may seem laudable, well thought out and for all the


right reasons, there are flaws in the thought process; flaws that some might call gaping chasms.


In many cases the conversions were to the wrong type of housing i.e. luxury apart- ments for incoming non locals as opposed to the desperately needed locally affordable social housing for established local families. Not only did this lead to a scarcity of prop- erty for the established local community, it quite obviously led to a mass injection of extra people (and vehicles) to the local area. Again, that’s just common sense – isn’t it?


EXPANSION BY STEALTH


An ‘expansion by stealth’ has also been allowed in many places in that much of the expansion was merely for the purpose of investment ‘flipping’ of properties. ‘Flipping’ is the process where an investor (normally from outside of the area) buys a property, converts or renovates and extends it, before promptly re-selling it at a profit. Every time a property is ‘flipped’ its value increases as does the whole of the local property mar- ket, essentially pricing out the locals, bringing in more people and adding to the plummeting poor air quality. Can you see how the problem has been manufactured by those in power?


Moneyed non locals will buy properties, extend and expand them, then ‘flip’ them for a profit, transforming the local area into a massive game of Monopoly with huge mon- etary gains for the “flippers” at the expense of the locals but more importantly, their pre- vious good air quality. Added to this is the fact that in many cases these enlarged con- versions were in already densely populated areas or adjacent to busy or close to capaci- ty roads. This ‘expansion by stealth’ came with little or no extra local infrastructure pro- vided, principally roads or road expansion.


LACK OF LOCAL RESPONSIBILITY


Now call me idealistic if you like, but I thought that the role of locally elected representa- tives, or Councillors as they are more commonly known, especially those making planning decisions, was to try and ensure that the needs of the local area were always uppermost in their minds. Whilst hopefully also weighing up carefully the ramifications and effects of their decisions on the estab- lished community and the local area. Alas, I think that I may have been wrong, as the real- ity of these people’s past actions has been anything but, as history stands testament!


SEPTEMBER 2020


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