Dear Kathy - and copied to Amanda Tomlinson, Chief Exec of the Black Country Housing Group, who has seen High Plateau - my top priority, after trains put back on easily reinstated railway lines in our congested, traffic choked, conurbation. Not very high climate/resource/nature impacting tramways.
It was very sensible of you to expect members of the committee to have read the report and to prepare questions/comments beforehand. Well done!
I had read it but, even so, I should have asked you to summarise or to give us the most important points! You did not mention High Plateau in the report but it was hardly relevant, of course. But I wondered if you had not, in fact, written it. Presumably, the authors were the two officers named under your signature.
It was announced today that net migration was 745,000 in 2022, according to the ONS. A little more than 1% of the population. "Immigration is now the main factor driving the population of England and Wales to grow at the fastest rate since the baby boom of the early 60s. ... The boats make up around 3% of all arrivals." Radio 4, 6 pm News, 23 November 2023. This makes it all the more urgent that we build smaller homes (not 4 and 5 bedrooms and not such spacious and gracious living as seen at the Gables, Hagley). We should be building apartments of 1/2 bedrooms with no garage but are low cost, highly energy efficient and solar powered, for the most badly housed and migrants. Especially on High Plateau! For me, it is scandalous that for land designed to take homes, it is overlooked in favour of farming land, as at Hagley.
If Pool Road car park is demolished in Halesowen, such is the UK housing crisis, exacerbated by net migration, I think apartments must be built there and not yet another college building, as reported in the Halesowen News.
I think, in light of the climate and ecological/nature crises, we need to tread much more lightly on the planet, think big and generous to lead us to smaller, less greedy living - or lifestyles. Only in this way do we cut greenhouse gas emissions.
With best wishes
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