Each town in Dacorum will be affected in different ways by the Local Plan, but the impact of an unchanged plan would be change our communities in fundamental ways.
Our general response to the Local Plan can be seen in our previous post.
Joseph Stopps is the prospective Dacorum Borough Council By-Election candidate for Tring Central, and he made specific observations and comments that we included in our official response to Dacorum Borough Council:
Tring will see a 55% increase in houses which will be built almost entirely on green belt land. The character of the local town will be changed forever. Inadequate thought to the pressures on water supplies, water waste, traffic needs, medical facilities, education, recreation, recycling centres and employment needs (to name but a few crucial infrastructure requirements) have been made. It seems a huge number of houses will simply be added to the town. We are particularly concerned with the developments being proposed on the East of Tring which seem to have poor connectivity to the town.
Specific issues to Tring include:
1) The High Street is very narrow and at points dangerous to pedestrians and cannot accommodate double the amount of traffic. Air quality on the High Street is also very poor with schools close by.
2) With the loss of local business hubs such as Akeman Business Park there is a lack of local business space in the town centre to accomodate a doubling in size of the local population.
3) Tring has no recycling centre and already desperately requires one. Fly tipping is increasing due to lack of local facilities.
4) Tring Station has poor public transport connectivity and inadequate parking. Buses are infrequent, unreliable , expensive and only operate during certain times. Cycle paths are poorly maintained and dangerous with cars given priority. Sustainable connectivity to the station would need to be greatly improved to accomodate a doubling of the towns size and should in the Local Plan.
5) Tring has lost all it’s banks and other valuable local amenities, many of which have been converted to residential, already the local post office is struggling to cope with demand.
6) Tring will lose a huge amount of it’s valuable Green Belt. We call for every acre of Green Belt which is developed a further two acres is rewilded with public access. Such rewilded sites must be protected for future generations and located within easy access of the new developments.