River Medway

A day mostly of walking. Took Susan's car in for its MOT and service and decided to walk back from town via the riverbank and for breakfast at Weatherspoons.

Our Council's Local Plan is up for scrutiny by a Planning Inspector and all other interested parties so called in at the Town Hall to listen to half an hour's procedings on the number of new homes projected for the Borough. This was the second day of a process that will take until December to complete.

There's been much controversy about the 18000 new homes the Council thinks we need in the next 5 years. Yesterday's discussion was for those who think the figure is too high. Today's debate was for those who think it is to low. Arranged against the Council were a barrage of house builders who naturally felt that the figure was too low. Their arguments were interesting and were mostly based on the failure of London to build enough houses and that Maidstone was the least expensive place to build more houses to meet the needs of people who migrate out of London and help meet the shortfall of the London Boroughs who are not going to be able to build enough houses to meet the demand.

We're aghast at this. London's problems are caused by their own policies of building expensive homes often with foreign capital often for wealthy foreign investors. Why should we pick up the outcomes of this because we're one of the few places to which people could come? And anyway, too many extra people would put unbearable pressure on the existing infrastructure. Our roads are already conjested and schools full and the Council is proposing to build 18,000 homes!

By the time we'd got home it was almost time to turn around and walk back into town to collect the car which had passed everything OK, so that should be sorted for another year. An 8.6 mile round trip.

I wasn't able to decide which shot to blip today. I love the bright colours of the riverside this morning but also I liked the angles and reflections at the new library nearby.