NORTH SWINDON RESIDENTS have been left furious at their council’s decision to push ahead with the building of nearly 1,700 new homes on greenfield land. Despite worries that the new Tadpole Farm development will bulldoze yet more of the town’s green spaces and create a serious flooding hazard, Crest Nicholson (who have a long history of building on flood plains, and recently tried to concrete over 150 allotments in Bath) and an assortment of Tory Councillors have pushed the project through. The decision comes despite the new South Swindon Wichelstowe development laying more or less empty, with no signs of filling up. Add this to the fact that, as of the last count, there were 2,518 empty residential properties falling into disrepair around Swindon (with a further 5,000 throughout Wiltshire), and the case for new build starts to fall apart. Local politicians and construction companies will always play the ‘creating new jobs’ card when defending their plans, but this argument has never added up. With regulations on the quality of new buildings at an all-time low, planning regulations governing green land more meaningless than ever, and provisions for building ‘affordable’ housing practically non-existent, new builds represent a license for construction companies to print money, while foisting cowboy constructed, overpriced housing on the rest of us.
If local councillors and housing companies really cared about Swindon, and job creation, they would be far more willing to invest in sprucing up the town’s empties and offering them as social housing to ease an already overflowing council-house waiting list of over 13,000. The development at Tadpole farm is nothing more than big business exploring more ways to rake in massive profits at our expense, all with the eager help of their Tory toadies.
