Thame Tories talk tough

THAME’S Conservative candidate for the General Election found himself talking mostly to the converted on Wednesday evening, when he held a public meeting at Thame town hall, attended by 16 people, the majority being members of the Conservative Association, Conservative District Councillors and Thame’s Conservative County Councillor.

But the make-up of the mostly invited audience did not mean however, that John Howell and his panel of Conservative candidates for both the Parish and the District Council elections, were given an easy ride.

When he was asked if he was concerned that Thame’s Neighbourhood Plan was being ‘nibbled at the edges’, (question from Thame.Net) particularly with the new employment complex on the by-pass exceeding the size allowed for in the Neighbourhood Plan, the Tesco store application for a large supermarket on what is reserved as ’employment land’ (the DAF site) and disquiet over The Elms plan, he replied: “I am behind the Neighbourhood Plan and support entirely the application process going through its normal course.”

When asked if he would be attending planning application meetings and   ‘speak up for Thame’ (Ed.) John replied: “I will keep my counsel about what I will be doing.”

He said that he thought the Neighbourhood Planning system was ‘working well’ and that he was glad to see Chinnor working on its Neighbourhood Plan.

Barry Brown, a resident of Towersey, was critical of the Conservative party’s campaign and asked:  “With such positive news, costs down, unemployment down etc, how is that we (the Conservatives) are still only neck-and-neck with a man who has never held a proper job in his life and the election campaign is being dominated by a ‘chit of a girl’ from Scotland?  Cameron should be ‘flying in’! We’re doing a very bad job!”

John Howell replied: “It’s because of the polling methods and their range, which some put us 4-5% in front, and others 1% behind. I cannot understand why the poll predictions differ so much from the Bookmakers who put Cameron remaining as Prime Minister. I don’t myself spend much time analysing the polls.”

The questioner continued: “At a national level with regard to TV etc we did not hear the Conservatives coming on the box until John Major the other night. From what they see on the TV, the people out in the sticks think that the Conservatives are running a bad campaign, scratching around for half a dozen seats.”

John Howell replied that he didn’t think the situation was as bad as Mr Brown painted it, but that he would feed back his comments.

There was mention of Government Minister Grant Schapps and his recent ‘difficulties’ and a lot of blame put on ‘left wing media‘ including the BBC. John Cotton said that there were both left and right wing segments of the media and that complaining is seen as winjing and detracts from your message. “We need to continue with positive messages,” he concluded.

Q; Will we have to have more houses?

There was much discussion about future housing numbers for the district and particularly about securing the required 40% of ‘affordable’ homes from any new development, and the future of ‘Localism’ and Neighbour Plans. In answer to a question about whether there were likely to be changes to, or relaxation of the Localism Bill to encourage more housing to be built, John replied: “Probably, yes’. But I would think that any changes made would have to be done with the permission of the communities affected, about where the new houses are going to be located. There would be no setting of numbers by Government.”

John Cotton, Conservative Leader of the Council at SODC, said he was pleased to hear that there would be no ‘top down’ imposed housing numbers but that he was concerned that SODC was being forced to approve planning permissions because of pressure to comply with government rules on a ‘Five Year Land Supply’ which went against the idea of no ‘top down’ imposed housing numbers. He was anxious to know whether a next Conservative government would make sure local people determined the numbers.

John Howell responded by welcoming moves to introduce a  “community right of appeal” into the planning system (Ed. whereby a community could appeal against developers for things such as insufficient infrastructure, non-compliance with government guidance and non-compliance with a local neighbourhood plans – See LINK .  John Howell added that the gross figures (identified in the recent SHMAR) did not invalidate the Five Year Land plan, but that: “We do need to look at the definition of ‘A Five Year Land supply’.

Q: Why HS2 through the Chilterns?

A Chinnor resident asked John Howell why the HS2 route was going through the Chilterns and properties were having to be ‘Compulsory purchased‘ when it might be better and cheaper to run it alongside the M40.

John Howell replied that in his opinion it was the best route, and that he supported HS2 because in his view is the best means of transferring growth from the South to the North of the country. The questioner suggested that it would be better and cheaper to run the route across the Chilterns through tunnels, because landowners would not have to be compensated, and he wanted John to lobby for that to happen.  John Howell replied that many people would object to the route following the M40 and doubted it would be cheaper. He added that he was happy for the questioner to lobby for the route to go underground but that the figures would have to be looked at very closely.

Q: Are the Conservatives serving the young?

Thame resident, Richard Jefferies, referring to John Howell’s poor showing in a Poll held following a hustings at Lord Williams’s school in Thame, with year 12s and 13s (see LINK), asked him if the results indicated that he (John) did not ‘have his finger on the pulse’ with the younger members of the constituency?

John replied that he had tried a number of ways to engage young people, including going into schools and talking in assemblies. He said that he had enjoyed the Thame hustings but was not surprised at the result because, he said: “Young people generally tend to be more socialist-minded but they generally grow out of it!”

Jeannette Matelot Green, currently an Independent Town Councillor, is standing as Conservative candidate in the District Council Elections. She said that she did not think young people looked at political colours, and that because she had chosen young people’s charities – The Skate Park and Young Carers – to support during her Mayoral year, when they see her name, young people would vote for her.

Nigel Champken Woods said that he and other councillors had been to Lord Williams’s school to discuss such things as how planning works, and that he agreed that young people ‘probably do change’. David Dodds, also a town councillor and a district councillor candidate, said: “I think we have been very responsive to young people and provide them with a great deal in the form of grants for sports, for music, for bursaries etc. We cherish our young.”

Q: What can we do about the difficulty of affordable housing in this constituency?

There was much discussion on this subject around what is meant by ‘affordable?’ ; that we need not just one and two-bed homes because there are a number of families needing homes too; that we need basically ‘more’ houses to mitigate market forces of supply and demand keeping prices high. David Dodds was angry about, as he put it, the way the ‘Angus Firearm’ building ‘snuk’ in, supposedly as smaller, affordable flats, but now the price was over £260,000.

John Howell said that he had asked SODC to ‘get on with building more homes’ but that ‘we need to insist that these include a number of affordable and ‘low market’ housing. He also mentioned the Government’s new Help-to-buy ISA which will, he said, help young to buy a house.

Town Council candidate, and current town councillor, Mike Dyer, said that the Thame Neighbourhood Plan says ‘must’ include affordable homes, and that means on the actual development site, not somewhere else, and that the town council would continue to ‘police’ that.

John Cotton said that there was a balance to be struck as ‘viability‘ was important for developers, who would not build on a site if they couldn’t make a profit. He said that what was in a Neighbourhood Plan was not a reason to refuse an application, but was a ‘material consideration’.

Q: Any chance of a change of bias in education funding from urban to rural schools?

John Howell replied that he agreed funding had been more favourable to cities and that he had lobbied on behalf of rural schools, and that the government had agreed to ‘re-adjust’ the system to make it fairer. Education had, though, he said, been underfunded by local authorities too.

Q: Is it possible to ask local businesses to contribute to a subsidy for local buses, which since they were cut, leave towersey residents dependent on the buses, very limited access to Thame for the shops etc?

County Councillor Nick Carter said that the problem was that some of these rural routes had hardly any passengers and so just were not economical to run without county council subsidies. He accepted that these buses were ‘a life line’ for some people.

“It’s a case of use it or lose it, said John Howell.

Sonja Francis, who is a member of Thame4Business, part of the 21st Century Thame Partnership, said that she would take the suggestion back to the business group. Nigel Champken Woods described how in Singapore, he experienced a system of ‘pick up taxis‘ where taxis would run up and down a particular route and people could just flag them down and share the cost.”

Q: We need to provide something for the young people; why can’t we build something like a cinema on the Cattle Market site?

David Dodds said that whatever was built on that site, and the Neighbourhood Plan says a ‘mixed use site’, would need to be economically viable. He added that if a cinema was commercial, it would have been done. He mentioned Thame’s cinema Club, Thame Cinema 4 All, which was successful, but said that he had hardly ever seen a young person in the audience.

John Howell said that he would write to the Cinema companies.

Mike Dyer said that any idea that came forward would be looked at by the town council. David Dodds said that any plan would be ‘choked’ if it did not include more parking.

Q: A Danish Member, who lives in Thame, asked on behalf of a constituent, about the rules for child benefit which mean that there is no benefit for married couples for a two-year-old, which meant that she could not afford to go back to work.

“The Conservatives will increase provision for child-care,” replied John. “It is part of the development of employment that we also provide women with the ability to get the child-care they can afford.”

Nick Carter responded: “Cameron says he intends to lower the age at which child-care will be available and give 20 plus hours of free child-care per week. How the country will be able to afford that I don’t know.” (see LINK )

The meeting ended with a member congratulating John Howell for what he had done over the last five years.