Refurbish your home the traditional way Cosford South - Autumn 2012 (including Kersey, Semer, Aldham, Nedging, Naughton, Do you live in a traditional building? Do you want to and ) refurbish it cheaply using traditional, organic, breathable materials, that you can apply yourself? Or are you Help make a difference : join considering an eco-build? Learn how by taking a course at Suffolk Green Party today! Orchard Barn Farm, at Far Ringshall, Mid Suffolk. The barn has I would like more information Green News  about Suffolk Green Party been restored by local volunteers who have now set up I can deliver Green Party a community interest company to revive traditional building  newsletters in my street or village skills. Tesco’s new application Pylons ––– a third I would like more information about Email: [email protected]  practical tasks like tree planting, Phone: 01473 658193 / Mobile: 077660 54042 should be rejected again alternative volunteering in conservation areas and litter picks. This August, Tesco made a fresh application to build a supermarket National Grid is showing an ex-  I would like to join the Suffolk Green and car park at the Brett Works site in the heart of the town. traordinary lack of imagination Party. Your Babergh Green Party Contact - Robert Lindsay Tesco’s plans which would rip the heart out of the town and destroy in sticking rigidly to its idea for a £5 cheque payable to Suffolk Green its atmosphere, turning it into another soulless “clone town”. new line of pylons running next Party. Please send to 3 Wash Lane Green campaigner Robert Lindsay moved to Suffolk two years to the exiting line between Corner, Great Finborough IP14 3BJ ago with his wife and two After Tesco first submitted its plans in 1999, Babergh council fell into its Bramford and Twinstead. So far children aged 5 and 7. He arms by writing into its crucial local plan that the town “needs” a food the debate has centred on gave up a job as a Times supermarket of up to 2,900 square metres and that the Brett Works site was whether or not the Grid can af- business journalist in the best option. ford to put the line underground. London to run a After a long But the real question is whether smallholding between campaign by the new lines are needed at all. and Hitcham. Hadleigh residents, The Green Party has proposed a He is a Bildeston parish last summer better idea. Put a cable on the councillor. Last year he councillors on seabed off the east coast, linking stood as the Green Party Babergh planning the offshore windfarms and Size- well with London. In reality, ur- candidate for the Brett committee finally plucked up the ban conurbations such as Lon- Vale ward of Babergh courage to vote 8 to don need the District Council - 7 against Tesco’s power while in

.……. covering Bildeston, … … …… …… previous East Anglia we …….… … … Hitcham, and application, and should not be Brettenham and lost by against their planning for only six votes to the council’s own greater con- incumbent Tory. He policy. They sumption but believes this shows that rejected it on the concentrating people are fed up with the grounds of “design” because their earlier writing of the local plan meant on local micro- complacent sea of blue they could not reject it on ground of retail need. generation that controls the county However, since then Morrisons has built a 4,500 sq m store inside the projects such as solar panels and that Suffolk folk are former Buyright building, which means the town no longer “needs” a retail store, according to Babergh’s own criteria. and communi- not as Conservative as ty wind tur- everyone thinks. In reality, the Morrison store at the Buyright site is not necessary either and bines. Green He can be contacted on 01449 741959 will encourage yet more people into their cars. But it is a better option than Party county Tesco in the centre of town. councillor An- [email protected] Despite what Babergh planners seem to think, there is no inherent “need” drew Stringer said: “Although we for a giant supermarket in town. There is a need for a sense of community, highlighted these options for small scale, independent shops, for markets selling food produced months ago, the Grid has not Key Contacts locally. provided a clear analysis of the Robert Lindsay 01449 741959 [email protected] It should be an open and shut case, so write to Babergh planning financial options.” This despite Sudbury Dean Walton 01787 372639 [email protected] department to object and urge district councillors on the planning the fact that the Grid is planning Mid Suffolk Cllr. John Matthissen 01449 771742 [email protected] just such a subsea cable on the

Name:………………………………………………… … …… …..………Phone………… : Address:……………………………………………..…………………………… ..…. … … . E-mail ……………………………….…………………………………………….. : … …… ……. Comments,questions, suggestions, problems ……. committee to vote against this latest application. west coast to link and Wales with Scotland. Printed by Suffolk Greenprint Printed on 3 Wash Lane Corner, Great Finborough IP14 3BJ Recycled Paper Promoted by Brian Fearnley, 14 Dove Close, Debenham IP14 6RR www.suffolk.greenparty.org.uk Renewable energy – it still You can do something about lorries and speedingffic tra Fed up with lorries thundering through villages between the A134, the A14 and A12, then contact the makes sense to invest in the sun county council highways department and give them the Dramatic falls in the cost of solar panels mean that Several such as Whatfield and NedgingNedging? Heavy goods name of the haulage company, the time, date and community vehicles are not supposed to be using the roads location of the vehicle. You can also use an incident report despite recent cuts made to the tariff for groups in the Photovoltaic panels, installing such panels on your through our villages unless they are delivering form on the county’s website. The county will contact the area are pushing locally. One of the reasons being the damage they roof can still give good returns. ahead with their offending haulier and remind it of the routes it is cause to bridges and garden walls on sharp bends. supposed to use. It still offers a very good rate of return, better than most plans for community solar The county council has designated routes for hauliers 30mph to 20mph annuities, given that the tariff is tax free and is guaranteed through Suffolk, and roads through medieval villages are to rise with inflation for the next 25 years. You should get schemes. Bures, Meantime, it makes no sense that vehicles are encouraged inspired by not designated routes. This issue is not taken seriously your money back after about eight or nine years. Tariff cuts enough by our elected representatives. If you see lorries to drive at 30mph through the narrow streets of villages are now planned at regular intervals and will be cut in line nearby ’s like Whatfield, Nedging, Semer and ElmsettElmsett. The community driving through that you suspect are not making local with the drop in price of the panels, so the best thing is to Association of Directors of Public Health and road safety power scheme, has put panels on a community centre, while drop-offs but using the route as an illicit shortcut order either just before or a few months after the lastest cut charities like Brake and Living Streets believe that the safe (scheduled for the end of October when we went to press). Transition are intending to buy panels for the village hall with their own funds. speed for all residential streets in towns and villages is You need a roof facing roughly south, ideally pitched at 30 20mph. Green Party candidate for Cosford Robert Lindsay degrees although the exact angle does not matter too much. is campaigning for a 20mph limit in Bildeston. Ask your county councillor why Suffolk is not imitating Lancashire, with 20mph speed limits on all residential roads. Making the transition to something better 60mph to 40mph More people are killed on rural roads than urban roads. First Lavenham, then Sudbury, now Bury St • establishing more recycling and reusing While there are more collisions in towns, the chances of Edmunds – all are aiming to become a Transition opportunities dying from a collision is higher on a rural road. The Town. The movement – the English arm of which • learning new skills and crafts such as bee 60mph national speed limit is too high for twisty, single- began in Totnes, Devon, eight years ago – aims to keeping, re-building bicycles, or carriageway roads that link together villages like Kersey, • making ice cream! Semer, Whatfield and ElmsettElmsett. Here the limit should be empower local communities to become more self- 40mph. reliant and resilient by doing things locally rather "Whatfield: Is this the right message?" than being too dependent on the global marketplace and a fossil-fuel economy. If you live near Lavenham and want to get involved, Affordable Homes - --- cashcash notnot laxlax The latest proposals follow from March when the Being a Transition Town is about keeping things contact Carroll Reeve on 01787 247674. If you want Government’s controversial “New Planning Policy planning is the answer Framework” came into force. It will allow swathes of green local – supporting local producers, craftspeople, to get involved in Transition Bury, contact Richard Suffolk to be paved over, because it removes the protection food-makers and businesses – by reducing food Frost on 07590 515992 / [email protected] or Many Suffolk villages are faced with an exodus of from development from open “undesignated” countryside. miles and keeping our local town and village shops Mark Ereira [email protected] / 07913 their young people who cannot afford the Instead there is to be a “presumption in favour of thriving. Green Party County Councillor Mark Ereira , 818838. mortgage for a home in the place they grew up. sustainable development” with every application. The test who represents Bury, said: ‘It’s a form of for whether something is sustainable is not made clear but it Green Party Answers: is assumed that it will mean simply a few solar panels on community DIY, a process of self-reliance. Doing In addition, Transition Sudbury plans to launch • income tax and council tax incentives to encourage houses. things for ourselves and together with others, loyalty cards for local independent traders soon. existing empty homes to be rented out The real sustainability questions - whether the houses built rather than waiting – rather forlornly – for national • will form part of a real community, for example - will not be governments to turn up and sort it for us!’ power to local communities to build new affordable homes, where necessary, where the local community asked. Developers will have a charter for building the Transition Lavenham kicked off its own initiative by wants them. profitable “executive” boxes they favour. Meanwhile, handing out free vegetable seeds at its first subsidies for the sort of homes we need, housing association meeting. The organisers noticed that there was In Babergh district alone there are already 1,000 empty rentals , new council homes and shared equity, are being homes, mostly in private ownership. Babergh has issued slashed. much more home produce around the following planning permission for hundreds of other homes that have There is a glimmer of light however: - harvest season. It has held several public meetings not yet been built. They are not being built because and has also been actively organising solar panels developers know that people cannot afford to buy them. Villages can take control of their own development for the village hall roof. Unfortunately Government and local authority policy is Campaigners in Lavenham, for example, are urging the parish A few other examples of transition town projects going in the wrong direction, encouraging developers to council to be one of the first in the county to take new are: build acres of box-like new homes tacked on to the edge powers to control its own development and encourage the building of new affordable homes for young people. • creating green spaces, green buildings large towns, with no sense of community. The latest • misguided move is to ease planning regulations, including Legislation which came into force earlier this year allows supporting farmers’ and craft markets removing the requirement to have a proportion of affordable parish councils to develop their own “neighbourhood plans”, • committing to car-free days homes on new estates, to try to boost the construction which, if approved by a referendum in the parish, will • growing fruit and vegetables on unused land for industry. This will simply fuel more speculation in the become a legal part of district planning policy. It would give the whole community to share housing industry and another boom and bust cycle. The Lavenham people the power to set the rules, such as • identifying a town’s fruit trees to ensure none problem is not the planning regulations or a lack of sites to insisting on the use of local materials, of more efficient build homes, but that people cannot afford the rents or the heating or of better standards of insulation. goes to waste Lavenham Market Square: a new market for local produce mortgages to buy them.