2014 has swept in with wet and windy weather in the attractive outskirts of Eastern Colne. But a two pronged planning flurry has also arrived. Prong one is in the form of a six week consultation period on the latest Core Strategy draft. The consultation closed on Friday 21st February. This addresses the Plan for all aspects of Pendle Borough right up to 2030. The now well established Lidgett and Beyond organisation with hundreds of members has submitted its views and recommendations for keeping our local landscape worthy
of the proud inhabitants of Colne and also to encourage visitors who come from far and wide to appreciate the timeless quality of the immediate surrounding countryside. Just take a walk on the east side! The Council spends money actively promotes tourism here. But prong two and threatening all this is the dark spectre of 270 houses on "The Rough" which is part of a network of paths and vistas which bless this East Colne landscape. Yes! That is 270 houses on top of all the empty houses we already have in the Borough as a result of the period of national economic blight we have suffered over the past six years. This is in fact the most desperate economic period since the 1930's when I was born. . New planning laws are now leading to developers dashing for easy virgin land instead of starting with brownfield sites. We citizens are recycling as much used material as we can every other week at our back doors at a considerable financial cost to the nation; but we are stopping recycling our previously used land in favour of virgin ground. Doesn't this strike you as a monstrous contradiction? I detect, in our legislators, a massive lack of consistent thinking and common sense. This Island is too small to squander any valued bit of it. OGO
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AuthorDCC-P is Chairman of L&B's Trustees and Treasurer Archives
August 2018
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