The Response of the Burton Green Parish Council to the Coventry Local Modelling Report, December 2016
THE RESPONSE OF THE BURTON GREEN PARISH COUNCIL TO THE COVENTRY LOCAL MODELLING REPORT, DECEMBER 2016. INTRODUCTION This parish council considers that the projections of population and employment growth since the base year of 2013 up to 2034 may be unreliable. More importantly, we believe that the Planners have failed to recognise the impact of neighbouring housing developments on our transport infrastructure and in so doing have reached a conclusion: “the Cromwell Lane development does not have a significant impact on the total network delay or average speed” which is unsustainable. GROWTH IN HOUSING AND JOBS It is possible, if the Modelling Report is to be believed, that the population will grow by 18% and another 25,000 houses will be built in the period between 2013 and 2034 but it is also possible that these forecasts could prove wide of the mark. Projecting the future, in an uncertain world, is a precarious occupation whatever models are used, especially when it comes to predicting jobs. It seems that the consultants from Parsons Brinckerhoff, a multinational engineering and design firm, anticipate 28,200 new jobs in this period. For example, 15,000 jobs with the Friargate Regeneration Scheme, 4,250 at Eastern Green,1191 in the town centre and 5,000at Whitley/Whitley East and so on. Hopefully these assumptions are sound but they may be over optimistic. Certainly the positivity of this report conflicts sharply with the report by the respected Institute of Public Policy Research, “Britain in the 2020s.”According to the authors, the world of work will be revolutionised, with millions of jobs in retail and manufacturing disappearing as a result of automation and the internet.
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