Coming Soon! – The Lair of the Green Worm

Having very much enjoyed “The Lair of the White Worm” by Dracula author Bram Stoker, I’m contemplating a Summer project by way of tribute. My story would transplant “the worm” – an ancient serpent inhabiting the clay beds of Staffordshire – to the salt spa of Droitwich. This creature of the brine lagoon, “the green worm”, might then assist those campaigning against inappropriate development in South Worcestershire.

In the meantime, I strongly recommend a visit to the Droitwich Lido (shown below), saved from re-development for housing several years ago. This is an absolutely fantastic facility, whose restoration was brought about through the excellent work of the SALT (Save A Lido Today) Action Group.

M5 J6 PROPOSALS – THE STATE OF PLAY

The following information is taken from the “Planning News” section of Wychavon District Council’s website and the item entitled “Worcester Bosch Move”:

“The proposals were considered by the Councils Development Committee on Thursday 9th December 2010 where, whilst during the debate the applicants withdrew the Landscaping Reserved Matter from consideration. After careful consideration Members resolved to approve the application subject to the signing of a legal agreement which commits the applicants to achieving a modal shift in private car usage as well as providing 1.5h of off site woodland and financial contributions to public transport. The legal agreement is still subject to negotiation. The Secretary of State decided not to call the application in and has left it to Wychavon District Council to determine the application.”

Whilst I have complained elsewhere about the tendency for planning inquiries be held in football stadia, my concern here is that Secretary of State Pickles did not call this one in, although had he done so the ensuring inquiry might well have taken place at Worcester Rugby Club.

However, at least many of the new football stadia have been built near railway stations, thereby enabling supporters and those attending planning inquiries to travel by public transport, although development promoters almost always use private cars.

With regard to the proposed “Worcester Technology Park”, which includes not only the development identified in the current application, but also a subsequent phase, the likelihood of this “achieving a modal shift in car usage” is remote, given the inaccessibility of the site.

This is almost certainly one of the reasons why the Secretary of State did not want to have the proposals scrutinised at a public inquiry, which would also have thrown up a number of other difficult issues, including the level of public funding required to make the development viable. Let’s hope the due diligence process to be used for projects, like the proposed Worcester Technology Park, which have provisionally secured round 1 money (to the tune of £17 million in this case) from the Government’s new Regional Growth Fund has more substance to it than Wychavon Council’s decision-making, not least because the proposals do not yet have full planning permission.

THE SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT SUMMER

As I was endeavoring to cross Worcester’s Southern By-pass this morning in the company of a woman with two young children we were all nearly mown down by a motorist – there being no crossing facility – who seemed to feel the need to accelerate on seeing a group of pedestrians.

For an instant, I was overtaken by a vision of what can only be described as “The Sustainable Transport Summer”, a sort of earthly paradise in which those driving dangerously or too fast, most transport planners, their political masters and other instruments of motorised state oppression are banned forever from taking up the wheel.

The vision passed just as the aforementioned motorist managed to slow down so my fellow pedestrians and I could cross the road. A small step for we women, and perhaps the prospect of a rather larger one for humankind.

Grateful for both vision and slowing motorist, I also remembered to give thanks today for the removal of Councillor Derek Prodger as Cabinet member for transport at Worcestershire County Council.

Indeed there seem to be many people who share the feelings of a respondent to the Worcester News story that Councillor Prodger had been “booted out of the Cabinet”…..”There will be more street parties after this news than because of the Royal Wedding” !