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E-mail from David Lidington MP

Posted by David Lidington, MP for Aylesbury, at 13:54, Thu 7 June 2007:

I am writing to update you on my work as your Member of Parliament.

One of the most important issues for Aylesbury at the moment is the upcoming consultation on the development strategy proposed by the District Council after the Government insisted on thousands of new houses being built in Aylesbury. The strategy envisages 9,000 new homes on greenfield land to the south and south-west of the town, between the A41 Tring Road and the A418 Oxford Road. The consultation is due to run from 17 July until 28 August, although I have written to Housing Minister Yvette Cooper to ask her to extend the period to give more people the opportunity to respond.

I have already spoken at a public meeting in Bedgrove about the plans. I am very concerned that the Government is forcing massive development in Aylesbury without considering how the necessary infrastructure and services will be funded. It is unrealistic to expect developers to pay all of the £750 million that Aylesbury needs for new roads, schools, electricity substations, sewerage works and health services, but Ministers refuse to address the problem.

We are now in the unenviable situation where the Council has to find sites for thousands of houses to meet centrally-dictated targets even though it has had no input in the targets and has also called for infrastructure before expansion. If AVDC refuses to designate sites for development, there is a real danger that Ministers will do what they have already done in Milton Keynes and strip the Council of its planning powers, giving them instead to a Government agency.

The Post Office has announced plans to move up to 70 branches inside nearby WH Smith stores and Aylesbury has been earmarked for a move. I visited WH Smith on the High Street to see the plans for myself. Representatives from the store and from Royal Mail showed me that there will be seven post office counters at the back of the shop and they told me that they believe they can meet current and future demand levels. They also said that the Post Office would benefit from longer opening hours and from no longer having to pay the rates, rent, heating, cleaning, etc of maintaining their own premises. The proposals are currently out to consultation so please contact me if you have any comments.

Meanwhile, the Government has confirmed that up to 2,500 sub-post-offices are to close across the country by the end of next year. Neighbouring constituencies are to be divided into groups and dozens of closures may be recommended for each group. I am worried that both urban and rural post offices in Bucks are under threat and will fight any planned closures in my constituency.

At the beginning of the month, I spoke at the W.I.’s Great Milk Debate in Bledlow, summing up at the end of the evening. It was a popular and interesting event, with a packed village hall hearing from local farmers and agriculture groups about the difficulties facing the dairy industry at the moment.

At a meeting of the Three Estates Action Group, which covers Walton Court, Hawkslade and Southcourt, I heard concerns about waiting times at the Rabans Lane tip and the apparent removal of the right turn from Oxford Road to Churchill Avenue, which is a major inconvenience for some Southcourt residents. I have also recently went to the Aylesbury Citizens Advice Bureau to discuss their need for larger premises and visited Enercon Industries, a successful Aylesbury business.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me if I can ever be of any help, and feel free to respond to any of the short surveys that I have written on www.telldavid.com.

Yours sincerely,

David Lidington