Posts
The North Comprehensive School has an on site farm used for educational purposes for urban children in a farming and market town. The Councils have proposed building 25 homes on the land which would sacrifice an established part of the school and local community.
There is a local media campaign through KMFM and the Kentish Express to prevent the development going ahead.
A Source of Education
The North School Farm was established in 1936 and is used as part of a students learning programme where students take exams in Animal Husbandry. For an urban community in the heart of a market town, the farm provides a valuable education for students, aspiring farmers and animal lovers alike.
Students have been showing animals yearly at county shows, learning how to love and care for them and preparing themselves for the responsibility of adulthood and potential careers by giving up their free time to help out on the farm.
As local campaigners state on their Facebook group;
“Why do the Kent County Council deem it fit to take away the education and future of these students, just so they can put houses on the land and put money in their pockets?.
The discontent with Kent County Council’s avaricious approach to removing the farm stems from the Planning application, where they state the ground is not being used and does not involve any jobs being taken. This is clearly untrue and residents in the borough have taken umbridge against such callous discontent for their children’s education
Impact on Local Community
Residents of Essella Road have opposed the proposed building of 25 extra dwellings on the site which is in the heart of a congested area and in close range of three other schools as well as the North. The entrance would be situated on a dangerous bend, choking an already heavily used area which is nearby a railway works site with on road parking.
While concerns of immediate residents focus on the safety of the area, those in the wider community are concerned about the strain of the development in Ashford on the resources such as schools and jobs.
Excessive Development
Within the grander scheme of development in Ashford, Kent, part of the“ill-considered, poorly executed development on a massive scale”, the 11 houses are an arbitrary supplement to the proposed 31,000 homes to extend Ashford’s population in the next five years.
Further to this, a recent report by the Communities and Local Government Department have revealed that as of October 2008 Ashford Borough contained more than 1000 empty dwellings.
There is a significant waste of money in building on vacant land as opposed to renovating existing empty dwellings.
"Nationally there are over 650,000 empty properties across England, no longer used as homes that can be brought back into use with some investment. In Ashford alone the figure is 1160 empty dwellings" commented Ashford Lib Dem parliamentary candidate, Chris Took.
"The average cost of bringing these homes back into use is about £10,000 whilst the cost of a new build is closer to £100,000."
As residents opposed to the North School Farm site point out;
”There are a lot of other derelict ground in Ashford which the Kent County Council own, such as the Rothlawe School site, which has been unused for nearly twenty years.”
With such augmented changes to Ashford, the town has grown beyond recognition in recent years. As discussed in my previous entry on the planning for development, there seems to be no forethought for resources such as schools or high scale jobs within the extended urbanisation.
But out of them all, the North School Farm proposal stands out as negating education and raising hackles of residents who are sick of capricious movements by the Borough and County Councils to “build, build, build” and reap in the benefits with a significant lack of democratic participation and errosion of community ownership.
No comments:
Post a Comment