For this week’s edition of ‘Nimby Watch’, we’re off to Maidenhead, where golfing Nimbys are fitfully trying to block 1,800 new homes…
Where to? Maidenhead, a blue wall Berkshire commuter town about 25 miles west of London.
Who wants to build what? Cala Homes would like to create ‘Elizabeth Quarter’, thus providing that town, where the average property price stands at a cool £550,000, with another 1,800 residential properties.
I don’t imagine ‘reducing house prices’ is their motive. Me neither, but despite what bits of the internet have convinced themselves of recently, every bit of evidence we have suggests that a world in which we do build houses will have cheaper housing than the one in which we don’t.
If you’re going to waste time trying to prove the axioms of classical economics we’re going to be here all day. What’s there now? A council-owned golf course, wedged between, on one side, a station which, thanks to the Elizabeth Line, now has several trains an hour to the West End, City and Canary Wharf; and on the other, the M4. It is, in other words, the perfect place for a commuter town – again: £550,000 is the average – to build the homes it so clearly needs.
But I’m assuming the golfers object. Campaigners have spent years fighting this one, describing the golf course – which is, once again, a golf course – as the town’s green lung.
They want to preserve it for the men in plus fours, do they? Oh no, they’re much more ambitious than that. Two-fifths of the 132 acre site is apparently woodland, which they describe as an important habitat for wildlife. The campaigners would like to do away with the golf bit, and turn the site into something named ‘Maidenhead Great Park’.
What’s great about it? At a guess, its proximity to the rather more impressive Windsor Great Park, and the envy that invokes. Anyway, the campaigners have persuaded – I use the term advisedly – the developers to scale the plan back by a tenth, from 2,000 homes to just 1,800, so great work there. That was not enough for the local Nimby contingent, though, so in July they handed the council a petition signed by 2,000 people – fewer, it’s worth noting, than would live in the proposed new homes.
Alas for the campaigners, the Liberal Democrats currently running the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead have said their hands are tied. Pulling out of the scheme would cost the council around £120 million in predicted capital receipts and result in ‘significant financial compensation’ payments to the developer.
That’s a lot of money, even in Berkshire. It would almost certainly bankrupt the council, yes, which is why those running it have said it would be ‘all but impossible’ to abandon the plan. The campaign responded with a blog post headed: ‘Why RBWM can’t afford not to back out of golf course deal’, so good luck with that.
At any rate, the local Lib Dems are letting the plan go ahead, which is a twist on their usual approach to these things.
Good for them. A couple of specific officeholders are worth highlighting here. One is Julian Sharpe, the Conservative councillor for Ascot and Sunninghill, who’s pointed out the blindingly obvious fact that building on the golf course would help protect the borough from unwanted development on sites not set aside for housing in its local plan. ‘We need to be realistic about the housing need in the borough’, he said.
Hang on, are you being nice about someone? Yes, but don’t get used to it, because the other councillor I wanted to mention is Kashmir Singh, elected as a Liberal Democrat in Riverside ward. He was so upset at his party colleagues’ refusal to bankrupt the council in the cause of Nimbyism that he’s defected to, ah, Labour.
The party that just won a general election on a Yimby ticket. He’s the only Labour councillor in the borough and, let’s be honest, defecting in that direction won’t have done wonders for his re-election chances, will it.
Woodland’s nice, though. You know what else is nice?
Is it houses? Yes, but also the 37% of the site that will be preserved as publicly accessible green space. You know what isn’t nice?
You’re gonna say golf, aren’t you. How well you know me.
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