Where did the money go?

KEITH House, Eastleigh's Lib. Dem Council leader, stated that income from land disposal in Eastleigh is only used for new facilities for residents (Daily Echo, Thursday March 27). Could he please inform readers of this paper what exactly the reputed £20 million was spent on which was obtained from the sale of South Street Allotments in Eastleigh? Please also tell us exactly how much was received for the sale of these six hectares. The public who live around South Street have a right to know what has happened to this money - so far they have seen no benefits, just noise, mess, pollution and growing traffic problems.

Dr Andrew C Ross, Eastleigh. (As published in Southampton Daily Echo 3/4/08)

Building a vote loser?

I THOROUGHLY agree with Sam Snook's comments of Wednesday March 19 (Daily Echo Letters) about the tremendous amount of construction being permitted by the Liberal Democrat Council in Eastleigh.

Currently, I calculate that there are 1156 new dwellings in the process of construction or planning in the town of Eastleigh, not including smaller building projects of which there are scores. They are

432 new dwellings at South Street

27 flats on Old Service station, Southampton Road

161 flats at 68-96 Twyford Road

43 houses and flats on Magpie Lane

30 flats on Nightingale Avenue

63 flats and Offices in 8 storey building at Earth Night Club site

400 flats and houses on Prysmian site in Passfield Avenue.

Over the last 150 years the number of homes in Eastleigh has grown to around 10,500. In the next two years the numbers of homes are scheduled to grow by over 10 per cent more. However there will be no new main roads or sewers to cope with this demand.

Each dwelling will create an extra six traffic movements, that is another 7000 more traffic movements around Eastleigh a day. Travel will become a nightmare for commuters and the emergency services alike. Yet our Liberal Democrat council persist with this madness. Why? We have the chance to tell them "No more'', this May 1.

Air pollution: the consequence of more building in Eastleigh

One effect of all the rain we have experienced recently is the tremendous growth of plants, particularly weeds. Kate and I spent a peaceful couple of hours yesterday weeding part of our allotment. We had planned to continue this morning (Saturday) but it is raining again. While we were quietly working away I was listening to all the noise around- the roar of two motorways, each about a kilometer away, the traffic on Passfield Avenue and Derby Road and the occasional take off of a plane from Southampton airport, a kilometer in the other direction.

Most of the town of Eastleigh is hemmed in between the M3 to the west, the M27 to the south and the airport to the East. The motorways are heavily congested and occasionally gridlocked. Traffic flow around the town is poor; it can sometimes take an hour to travel a couple of kilometers. Air pollution is bad. Monitoring sites in various places around the town frequently exceed UK National Air quality standards and mean annual levels are above safety limits.

Eastleigh Borough Council will soon be examining plans to build 452 houses on South Street Allotment site and an unknown number of houses on the Woodside Road Allotment site. For each new dwelling there will be an estimated additional 6 traffic movements. What will happen to the Nitrogen Dioxide levels? They will rise further. Do the people of Eastleigh want to live in an increasingly unhealthy environment?

In the 1970's I conducted a piece of research on the park lakes of Liverpool for my M. Phil. degree. The 7 Liverpool parks were constructed because "the researches of sanitary science show incontrovertibly that the general health decreases and the rate of mortality increases in proportion to the density of population in a given area......it was suggested to construct a series of parks in such a relation to each other as will secure a central line of open space, to act as a kind of lung which will in a few years be the heart of Liverpool." (Anon 1868 - quoted in my thesis).

It appears to me that those 19th century Liverpool planners were more enlightened than 21st century Lib. Dem Councillors who are intent in pushing through plans to destroy places which have been public open spaces for over 80 years. By building more houses and roads they will further damage the health of Eastleigh people.

Mean annual Nitrogen Dioxide levels at a few sites around Eastleigh



Notes
Figures are in microgrammes per cubic metre, μgm-3
The National Air quality standard for Nitrogen dioxide is a maximum annual mean of 40 μgm-3 with 200 μgm-3 as a maximum which must not be exceeded more than 18 times in a year.
References
1. http://www.airquality.co.uk/archive/site_search.php
2. http://www.airquality.co.uk/archive/laqm/tools.php?tool=background04
3. http://www.airquality.co.uk/archive/laqm/tools/95_2004.csv
4. http://www.airquality.co.uk/archive/data_and_statistics.php?