Fighting for the Green Belt in Sefton has had its ups and its downs

During my time in local politics there were few years when threats to the Green Belt weren’t to the fore around Maghull & Lydiate.

Firstly, a bit of history – The area had been designated for a huge amount of building after the 2^nd World War, indeed the process of change had started prior to that war. It’s also worth noting that these adjoining communities were in Lancashire prior to local government reorganisation in 1974 when they became a part of Sefton Borough and Merseyside. Significant areas of agricultural land (pretty much all of it would have been the highest grades of such land) surrounding them was built on in the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s. This inevitably turned what were two semi-rural areas into significant suburbs of Liverpool, although the northern two thirds of Lydiate Civil Parish still retains a rural feel even today.

I started my 38 years run as a local councillor for Maghull/Lydiate in 1985, although my local political activity actually commenced in 1980. I recall rumblings of threats to the Green Belt back then, but the first big fight I was involved with came to a head in 1998 when a spirited campaign by Maghull Town Council, of which I was a member, sent away the Sefton Planners of the day and their Unitary Development Plan which had been eyeing up the very same high grade agricultural land which is now falling under tarmac and concrete. I refer of course to what is termed these days as the Maghull East Site, a huge urban expansion of around 1600 houses which is presently being built.

Back in 1998 the Town Council was on the front foot very quickly as big brother Sefton Council’s Planners were trying to soften up the Town for another major building splurge. The fact that we managed to fight off the plans and thereby retain the high grade agricultural land for food growing was my first big political campaign and winning felt good. The Maghull & Aintree Advertiser ran this article……

 

All then went quiet for a few years but those of us with the battle scars knew only too well that the forces of development would be back for another round and so it came about with the initial moves to put together Sefton Council’s present Local Plan in the early 2000’s. Note the name change from Unitary Development Plan to Local Plan, but the objectives were similar i.e. to designate what land within the Borough of Sefton should be used for. Inevitably, the process meant pressure to designate additional land for commence and house building from Green Belt. Considering Sefton is a Borough surrounded by the sea on one side and prime agricultural land elsewhere (except where it abuts Liverpool) the planners would surely look to take Green Belt/high grade agricultural land out of Green Belt; the very same process they’d gone through in 1998, so we knew what we were up against.

The difference this time was that Maghull Town Council did not really seem up for the fight although Lydiate Parish Council was. Yes, Maghull TC made some shocked and horrified comments but without it standing and campaigning full-square against big brother Sefton the battle would inevitably be won by the planners and so it came to pass. 

The photo below shows environmental protestors outside Maghull Town Hall in June 2013.....

 

Interestingly, my political party, which had run the successful 1998 defence, had fallen out of favour locally but a new independent group did make political headway in opposing Sefton Council’s plans (remember Pat from Lydiate’s group?), indeed they took 2 seats off the ruling political party on Sefton in 2016. However, the electorate turned against the defenders of the Green Belt in subsequent local elections just as it had done with my political party. The lesson from this is that seemingly the local electorate can swing from being pro-Green Belt/high grade agricultural land in one set of elections but then, in effect, take the opposite view in following elections. However, these days local elections can be and often are taken over by national political events to the extent that the voting on local issues is drowned out by them being used to express a view on the national government of the day. I think this is the real reason for the seemingly contradictory results.

So despite those of us who still wanted to save the Green Belt and preserve the high grade agricultural land, that feeds us, from development we lost and Sefton Council adopted a Local Plan in April 2017 which put huge swathes of agricultural land around Maghull & Lydiate down to be built on. This is where are now in 2023.

The massive urban extension to the east of Maghull is in the process of being constructed and the former ‘Tyson’s Triangle’ site in Lydiate too. However, Sefton Council picked another site as part of its Local Plan which it designated a ‘Reserve Site’. The purpose of it, we were told, was to ensure that house building still took place should any of the other designated sites in Sefton Borough, for whatever reason, not deliver the numbers of properties the Council had decided needed to be built. That Reserve Site is in Lydiate and is a very large piece of agricultural land bounded by Lambshear Lane, Liverpool Road and Moss Lane.

In recent weeks another environmental group has been formed to try to stop this Reserve Site from being developed, although as Sefton Council has all but already designated it for building, at some future point, that campaign group has one hell of an uphill battle on its hands. Of course, I back them in their efforts as someone who has fought 2 such battles in the past, winning one and losing one. Interestingly, I heard the other day that they also have the backing of the political party* which presently runs Sefton Council which, if it is true, begs an interesting question. How can the same political party which designated this Lydiate site and indeed all the other development sites in the Borough now back campaigners who are trying to overturn what that same political party put in place? I’d like to think that the political party in question, they know who they are, really are taking against their own Local Plan and that they will remove the Lydiate Reserve Site from it. If they don’t do that then, in my view, that site will almost inevitably be developed in the next few years as part of the current or subsequent Local Plan.

As most folks who know me realise I’ve retired from active local politics as of May this year but as an occasional blogger on political matters my thoughts on this knotty subject may be of interest to those who have taken up the environmental campaigning which I was involved with, indeed led, for 30 odd years. Good luck to them, but I advise caution regarding politicians. Are they actually doing things on the Council to back up what they say they are supporting? Beware the political smoke and mirrors and the fact that warm words don’t save land from development!

Note 1 – Lydiate, like a number of local communities has a Neighbourhood Plan and I was involved in putting it together. However, neighbourhood plans should not be looked as though they are of great significance as they can never oppose something that is in the Borough Council’s Local Plan. They are interesting background documents which can be useful in detailed planning matters but my advice to campaigners is to read and understand the Local Plan as that’s akin to being the Bible of planning in Sefton or indeed any other council area.

* Note 2 - The leader of the political party I refererence has tellingly said, only in the past few days, that his party will build on Green Belt!

 

 

 

The Quest for Speed

I’ve always been fascinated by our motivations for wanting to travel at speed particularly on our roads.

I’m a pedestrian, cyclist and car driver so I see our highways and those who use and abuse them from 3 perspectives I suppose you could say. I also live on a major road where traffic speeds are usually well in excess of the 30mph speed limit. I suppose you could also say that I’m a reluctant motorist, preferring to walk or cycle to local destinations within say a five mile radius of our home and use a train for longer journeys. Unlike some petrol-heads I know I’ve never really enjoyed driving, seeing it as wasting my time when I could be doing something more productive/enjoyable.

So having laid out my background to travel let me raise some, to me, interesting questions. Speeding i.e. driving above the speed limit for a road/motorway. Why do drivers do it? They’re late, they don’t allow enough time for a journey, they like speeding (it’s addictive?), they are showing off/attention seeking, they’ve got a car that will do high speeds (indeed it could well have been sold/leased to them on its speed potential), their job demands in effect cause them to speed or they simply want to dominate the road and it’s a testosterone thing in younger male drivers.

What you notice as a pedestrian/cyclist is that there are two distinct types of drivers; the careful ones and the couldn’t care less ones, with shades of grey in between. One thing you can hardly fail to notice as a cyclist and pedestrian, is that there are certain makes of cars/vehicles which are often driven carelessly and such vehicles are almost always under the ‘control’ of younger males up to say the age of 55, as a rule of thumb. The cars/vehicles in my opinion?  High-end German performance cars and white vans. They probably account for say 80% of the careless drivers.

The road 'sign' above is from Formby Lane in Aughton, West Lancs and yes it does say a speed of 130 mph. It may be someone's idea of a highway joke but this lane is often a racetrack. Photo - July 2023.

Someone once said to me, with regard to the German cars, just look at those who buy/lease them, or words to that effect. That implies that certain makes attract certain types of driver and I think there’s something to be said for that theory. For some, cars can clearly be status symbols which define achievement in life; the more expensive performance cars being for those who think they’re achievers and by definition they need to be driven as such.

Our roads are dangerous because of bad drivers often deliberately putting themselves and other road users at risk due to their need to show off their performance cars. Of course, they also do it because the chances of being caught are very small indeed. All you need is a bit of luck and technology which flashes up to you the positions of speed cameras. The luck will be associated with police mobile speed cameras but they are very few and far between these days. The reality is that where there aren’t any speed cameras or road humps a driver can usually travel at any speed they like on most roads without a care in the world. Some of us do that day in day out on 30mph, 40mph roads with maybe a speeding fine every couple of years being the ‘acceptable’ downside.

But we also buy performance cars to keep up with the Jones. If our friends have one we should have one too, so we continue to fit in with our family/friendship group. It follows that if that group regularly drives madly so should we, although this will mainly be a male thing with cars I would suggest.

I’ve also heard the phrase, which can be a ‘reason’ for speeding, of ‘keeping up with the traffic’. In other words you should drive at the same pace as other drivers so as not to slow down fellow road users. If everyone is driving at say 40mph on a 30mph road then ‘keeping up with the traffic’ is simply a poor excuse for bad driving surely? The 1 in say a thousand who get caught may well consider themselves a victim based on the fact that 999 did not get caught but that’s akin to a Trumpian defence!

A friend of mine who got a speeding ticket was sent on a speed awareness course where the oft repeated phrase, I’m told, was ‘a speed limit is not a target it’s a maximum’. Yet in reality most drivers use the speed limit as a target, indeed they may even set a speed limiter on their car (if they have such) to say 10% above the given speed limit basing that on police not prosecuting those within 10% of a given speed limit.

Another friend of mine, sadly no longer with us, used to take the view that he’d travel a few mph below the speed limit, say 27mph on a 30mph road and I bet he’d never heard the phrase ‘a speed limit is a maximum not a target’.

So to my mind speeding is a social thing, it’s keeping up, it’s showing off, it may even be an act of defiance. Whatever it is it’s something drivers can get away with the vast majority of the time whilst making our highways more dangerous. Getting caught is just very bad luck and we’ll go back to doing it soon after the sobering (I’m told they are sobering) speed awareness course message has worn off. A speeding tram or train driver is a criminal, a speeding vehicle driver is victimised by those who administer such matters. It all sounds a bit like benefits cheats are scroungers but tax evaders are celebrated does it not?

To me this motoring issue is just one example of our fall from being mostly a law-abiding society to a mostly not law-abiding one, which I pin back to the demise of the post-war consensus in the 1970’s. Since then we’ve become a ‘me first’ society where the individual is more important than society as a whole. Of course, politicians pander to such a view and in doing so we creep further away from the common good approach to one where it’s every man and woman for themselves.