Monday 1^st March

North Wiltshire MP James Gray welcomed major new policies from Conservatives to reform England’s ‘broken’ planning system. A new system of ‘Open Source’ democracy and neighbourhood involvement will help deliver sustainable development across North Wiltshire. Whitehall targets and unelected quangos will be scrapped, to be replaced with collaborative working and new incentives to promote and reward local homes and jobs.

This comes as official Government surveys show only 1 in 3 people think they can influence decisions in their local area, and just 1 in 5 people think they can influence national decisions.

Read more...

Traveller sites

We really have no idea at all of what demand there is for permanent or temporary traveller sites. Central Government has decreed that we need 4000 sites across England, but their logic is wholly bogus. As a result the unelected South West Regional Assembly, an organisation which a Conservative Government would abolish, came to the wholly unsupported conclusion in its so-called 'Regional Spatial Strategy' that we in North Wiltshire need 48 extra pitches (2 caravans each, so 96 caravans) plus 12 transit pitches; and that Wiltshire as a whole, including Swindon, needs to make provision for some 200 extra caravans. Says who?
I argued in my Commons debate that there should be a duty on local authorities to make suitable provision for local people - both the homeless by providing social housing, and for local travellers by providing encampments. Wiltshire already have 6 under their management, with a population of some 200 people. Do we really need to more than double that? Only local councillors should decide, not Central Government, and not unelected Regional Assemblies.

Read more...

Click here to read James's letter to the Planning Inspectorate opposing Brynards Hill development in Wootton Bassett.

“As far as I can see, the travelling community seems to have struck on a formula which under current planning regulations allows them to set up illegal encampments more or less at will,” said James Gray MP.

“This was one of the issues I raised with Jim Knight MP, Minister for the South West, at the South West Regional Grand Committee last Thursday,” said the North Wiltshire MP.

“The whole question of how much provision the Council has to make for gypsies and travellers of all kinds is a highly controversial one. Wiltshire is traditionally a very well provided county, but there are certainly those around who argue that because we have insufficient provision - depending on how you assess the demand - then it makes it difficult for planning inspectors to remove travellers from illegal sites,” said Mr Gray.

Read more...