20 September 2017
The Tories on Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council put forward the following motion to be debated at an Extraordinary Council meeting that was held on September 13th 2017.
“This Council believes in protecting the interests of the residents of Nuneaton and Bedworth first and therefore believes that any increase in housing numbers to accommodate the requirements of Coventry overspill to be unfair on the residents of this Borough, particularly where it protects Coventry’s green belt at the expense of our green belt.
This Council therefore resolves not to increase the housing numbers beyond those already consulted on until:
a. Coventry City Council re-evaluates its housing land supply and declassifies more of its own green belt land to accommodate its own housing requirements.
b. A further consultation takes place with the residents of Nuneaton and Bedworth on any proposed increase in housing numbers and density of identified housing sites.”
Cllr Ian Bonner put forward an amendment to remove the wording in paragraph a ‘and declassifies more of it’s own green belt land to accommodate it’s own housing supply’. We do not want any Green Belt to be declassified wherever it is. We, as Greens, want to save all Green Belt and did not support the whole motion because it condoned the use of Coventry Green Belt. As Cllr Kondakor stated clearly in the debate, we do support a re-evaluation of Coventry’s housing numbers ( and to that end, have responded to their Local Plan and questioned their numbers at their Local Plan inquiry) and would support a further consultation on any proposed increase in housing numbers but our councillors could not support the motion because of the wording.
There have been numerous comments from the Tories, largely on social media, that we are not supporting further consultation and will not work with them. This is untrue and, where we have issues in common, we will work with any of the other parties. The truth is that the Tories never approached the Greens about this and if they had discussed it with us beforehand, we are sure that we could have found wording that we could support. However, even if we had supported this motion, it would not have passed as the Labour Group all voted against it.
The video of the meeting is below.
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