David Watts

Liberal Democrat Councillor For Bramcote, Parliamentary Spokesperson for Newark, Editor of Challenge Magazine for the Green Liberal Democrats and Crime and Policing Spokesperson for Nottinghamshire Learn more

Letter to Newark Advertiser

by David Watts on 10 August, 2020

This is the text of a letter I sent to the Newark Advertiser this week:

Dear Sirs

Robert Jenrick seems determined that his legacy to Newark will be to be remembered as the worst MP this town has ever had. Not content with making a large personal contribution to the air of sleeze that dominates this government, he has now unveiled plans to change the planning system to take away all control from local people and local democracy, and to place all the power in the hands of large builders. Robert has suggested that the landlord who owns the property next door to you should be able to build two extra floors on it without any planning permission, so that the new family he houses there can look straight over your garden and the building will take away your light. Not content with that he also wants to strip local authorities of their powers to insist on new building being in the right place and to the right standards. This will do nothing for the residents of new homes but will make life much easier for developers to build low standard homes, creating the slums of the future. He claims that he wants to unblock the planning system, but there is no blockage other than massive landowners getting planning permission and then choosing not to build. His new proposals will do nothing to tackle this. Robert has already had to admit in court that he acted unlawfully in doing a favour for his developer friends, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped him trying to do exactly the same on a much bigger scale.  I don’t remember him telling the residents of Newark anything about this in the election last year.

For all our sakes he needs to think again and abandon these awful ideas.

Yours faithfully

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