Saturday 29 November 2014

Save a village

I've been checking out a few new roads in the area. That took me to North Ferriby, a place I know well as I lived there for many years. A housing development, known as Melton Fields, was proposed about three years ago for a piece of land that is not actually in Ferriby, but in the next-door parish of Welton. The land is next to a wood in an open field and the developers dared to suggest that a footpath and cycleway would connect the development to Ferriby through the wood, as well as by a road joined into a recently modified junction - modified with this purpose in mind in my opinion. The development caused outrage that the extra people would swamp the village services and destroy the character of the village.

Three years on and the planning application has been turned down by the local authority and there's an enquiry under way. Enquiries like this seem pointless to me, everyone knows the dice is heavily loaded in favour of the developers, so why waste millions on an enquiry that will ultimately allow the development to go ahead anyway? We need new houses.

The one thing I have noticed over the past few years is the number of very ugly signs scattered all over the village, protesting about the development. This ugliness is something the village should be saved from - it is a real mess. I wonder if the owners of these signs got planning permission to erect the signs as they don't seem temporary to me. It is interesting that some recent developments in the village have these signs outside their properties (the one pictured is not a recent development). So squeezing poky little in-fills in that don't match the surroundings and all strain the services is OK but building an integrated new development outside of the village, which includes extra services is not. Save the village, but from nimbys not sensible development.