KPS Will Stick To Your Demands

Letter to EDC 16/10/2018

Dear Mr Beaty

We understand that EDC are going to say EDC are now listening to the people of Eden as a result of the campaigns against the Masterplan.

We thought it important to tell you where we stand as a group.

We think we have earned the trust of the people of Eden and Penrith and we won’t let them down.

By that we mean – we will not allow EDC to get through the back door what they couldn’t get through the front.

We will stick to our demands.

These are clear and we will not trade them away.

Our supporters have signed up to this:

No Building on the Beacon
No New Town or Villages 2.5 miles from Penrith
No doubling of the population
No more Congestion
No more pressure on the Local NHS
No more pressure on schools
No to roads on every side of Penrith
Yes to affordable housing for locals
Yes to a better vision for Penrith and Eden

So we demand that EDC simply scraps the Masterplan. Scrap the woefully flawed and unlawful consultation. Bin it. Agree that the results of the Survey Monkey questionnaire will never be used. EDC should disengage with LandUse. You should cease all inappropriate ‘stakeholder’ meetings and discussions with any interested parties including developers. If you hold any such meetings in the future, minutes of what all parties said should be kept and posted on the EDC website. You should publicly confirm that no application for Garden Village money will be made in the current round, if ever.

Instead we believe that EDC’s plan now is to try to get phase 1 of the Masterplan adopted. For anyone who wants to see what that means look at the Keep Penrith Special Video. It is the massive development near the anaerobic digester which will easily be visible from Penrith and from the Lake District. It is unacceptable. It is 2.5 miles from Penrith. It does not meet the demands we have set out.

EDC must start again.

We are told that the following canard is being spun:

‘We never intended to apply for Garden Village money. You need 10,000 houses to do that’.

That is simply not what we have been told. EDC have or had every intention of applying. A document from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government dated August 2018 helpfully gives the ‘assessment criteria’. It says ‘ whilst we will prioritise proposals for new Garden Towns ( more than 10,000 houses ) …we will consider proposals for Garden Villages ( 1,500 to 10,000 houses). It also says that ALL proposals MUST be OF SUFFICIENT SCALE TO BE LARGELY SELF SUSTAINING’ (emphasis added) it also says ‘ the proposals must be ‘strong in all aspects…( with) ABILITY TO EXPAND SUSTAINABLY FURTHER IN THE FUTURE’ ( emphasis added).

So you can apply for Garden Village money for phase 1 , but only if it is self sustaining with its own shops etc and only if it can grow with phase 2 and 3.

That’s why you have to scrap the lot. If we the people of Eden somehow are bamboozled into accepting phase 1, then phase 2 and 3 will appear, sure as eggs is eggs.

We know EDC think the people of Eden are dim. But we aren’t that dim we can assure you.

Once EDC have conceded the demands of the people of the District then we will invite you to engage with us and all interested parties in building the plan we have promised our supporters we will build.

That is a ‘proper grounded, sensible, practical plan to make Penrith a better place to live, work, shop and visit and to get everyone to contribute their thoughts in building that plan’. We are not prepared to concede the leadership of that plan to a Cabal of Councillors who proposed the woeful Masterplan.

In due course EDC will need to ratify the ‘People’s Plan’ but it will be the people’s plan not EDC’s.

We will be posting this letter on our website shortly.

Yours sincerely
Adrian Hill
For Keep Penrith Special

https://keeppenrithspecial.org/sign-the-petition-say-no-to-masterplan/

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