THE BATTLE FOR ASTON MEAD

A SERIES OF PUBLISHED PRESS LETTERS DETAILING ONE RESIDENTS CONCERNS OVER THE WELSH ASSEMBLY GOVERNMENT'S A494 ROAD WIDENING SCHEME IN FLINTSHIRE

HOUSING SHORTAGE OR JUST POOR PLANNING - PUBLISHED 13/06/07

Sir,

I would like to comment on the seemingly shoddy and highly indifferent way in which Flintshire County Council has approached the rehousing of Welsh National Assembly tenants who currently occupy the properties in Aston Mead, which are due to be demolished in the near future as part of the A494 Road Improvement Scheme.
 
To say that the County Council has been both unhelpful and tardy in its dealings with these soon to be "homeless" families would be to overstate their involvement and their apparent commitment to meeting their statutory obligations. Given that Flintshire CC has had the best part of 15 years to prepare for the closure of the low cost social housing that Aston Mead represents, it is little more than a total disgrace that on balance local housing officials and councillors appear to be totally unaware and unprepared to meet the obvious housing needs of the dozen or so young families who will soon be required to give up their homes. Given Flintshire's approach to this problem, you could be forgiven for thinking that Aston Mead had suddenly dropped out of the sky, instead of having been known about for years.
 
Had the Council taken a well planned and systematic approach to the impending closure of these homes and re-housed the tenants over a period of time, then they could well have avoided a sudden increase in housing applications, principally from people who live on Aston Mead. Instead, Flintshire County Council seems to have chosen to play "the statute game" in respect to the tenants housing needs, by meeting their obligations in terms of receiving applications, by offering advice, but with no real intention of actually re-housing tenants. Rather, they seem to have adopted an approach where residents are actively driven towards the private housing sector, often by threatening them with the odious prospects of Bed and Breakfast or Hostel accommodation from Flintshire CC. For those parents with young children, many of whom are under 5 years of age, this is obviously not a preferred choice and so they inevitably find themselves with little choice, but to seek private accommodation which can be both very expensive and highly insecure. It has also been rumoured that Council officials have suggested that residents who are not prepared to consider the private sector might well find their entitlement to the derisory £4000 compensation threatened, an absolutely outrageous approach if it is true. Of the one or two families that have been offered council accommodation, they have been unable to move into their new homes, because the properties require extensive work, suggesting that even this particular aspect of Flintshire County Council's responsibilities has been poorly planned and executed.   
 
Having lived in Aston Mead for nearly 10 years and had plenty of first hand experience of Flintshire's so-called public services, the impending cloud of losing my home to the road development scheme has one unexpected silver lining. Because they will not even consider any application from someone in my circumstances, it has forced me to approach the neighbouring Cheshire authorities and they at least seem to have a professional, considerate and fairly equitable approach to people's housing needs, a concept that seems to be totally foreign to Flintshire County Council.

DEVELOPMENT IS GREAT PROVIDED YOU'RE NOT SINGLE, SKINT OR SANE- PUBLISHED 07/09/07

Sir,

The proposed road development scheme of the A494 which will ultimately see the demolition of the Aston Mead estate in Hawarden, will no doubt be regarded by many as a truly progressive move in terms of the Principalities northern transport network and when completed will be welcomed by these same very enthusiasts.

However, the remaining residents of Aston Mead, many of whom are single person households, living on a relatively low income and who are in generally good health, both emotionally and physically, appear to have real reasons to be concerned about the latest developments in respect of their current accommodation. As is common elsewhere in the UK, the single person household continues to feature very low on the housing needs register of local authorities and the publicly funded housing associations, whose very existence is supposed to to help supplement the remaing overwhelmed council housing stocks.

Nobody doubts that the Welsh Assembly is NOT and was never intended to be a landlord, but ultimately their decision to rent out the properties they had acquired in Aston Mead for the proposed A494 road widening scheme brought them the duties and responsibilities which are fundamentally attached to that role. Instead, because they are not a Registered Social Landlord (RSL) or indeed a Local Authority, in common with Flintshire County Council and a number of the regional Housing Associations they seem to be distancing themselves from any sort of responsibility for these remaining seemingly unwanted tenants.

Virtually all of the young family's who lived at Aston Mead have now been re-housed by Flintshire County Council, simply because they have been prioritised by both national and regional governments or local authority legislation, unlike those who live alone or couples that have no children, who are generally expected to settle for renting in the exorbitantly priced private sector or to live in a caravan, as one former pair of tenants have had to do.

It is increasingly frustrating to realise that the UK's housing registers seem to have become little more than a game for those that are often forced to lie about and invent personal circumstances which will further their housing applications, generally at the expense of those who are in greater need, as are many of those single people and couples still living at Aston Mead.

EXPRESSING LOCAL CONCERNS OVER A494 ROAD SCHEME - PUBLISHED 14/09/07

Sir,

In common with with other such regional transport schemes, the proposed A494 road widening project in North Wales has once again highlighted a fundamental flaw in the UK's treatment of and approach to it's vulnerable single person households, which in my view is nothing short of discriminatory. Perhaps best summed up by stating that if you're single, skint, sane and healthy, then you're highly unlikely to benefit from any of the nations welfare services, particularly those that are aimed at providing affordable, good quality, social housing which was a hallmark of Britain life up until the late 1970's.

Some long-term residents of the properties which were acquired by the Welsh Assembly for the A494 scheme, have suddenly found themselves in a housing 'limbo', unable to access local authority properties because of their single or childless status and unable to afford the spiralling costs of the private rented sector, which as elsewhere in Britain seems to be dominated by budding buy-to-let moguls who are eager to benefit from both government inaction and a lack of public investment.

Typically, the local authority involved with the A494 scheme, Flintshire County Council, has chosen to hide behind its statutory obligations to the family, the elderly and the emotionally distressed and basically abandon the single individual households affected by the road project to the rigours of hostel living, occupying caravans or becoming struggling tenants to occasional unscrupulous private landlords. The owners of the soon to be demolished houses and prime mover behind the transport scheme, the Welsh Assembly, have apparently chosen to overlook any sort of moral responsibilities for their remaining single tenants, seemingly content in the knowledge that legally, they have crossed every T and dotted every I.

It is regrettable to realise that politicians of all persuasions, both local and national seem to fundamentally disregard the lives, rights and opinions of the single person. Given that such singular households are reportedly on the increase in the UK and might already form a substantial section of the voting electorate, it is surely only a matter of time before they begin to demand and vote for some sort of parity with their fellow citizens, in all aspects of their daily lives

TIN TOWN’S ESCALATING COST TO THE PUBLIC PURSE - PUBLISHED 15/09/07

Sir,

Aston Mead in Flintshire, which is central to the proposed A494 road scheme in northeast Wales, is perhaps indicative of the financial waste and general mismanagement which has become such a feature of many publicly funded projects within the UK.

Over the past 6 months or so, many of the low income families who lived at the housing estate, which is locally known as “Tin Town”, have been re-housed or relocated by the local authority to equally affordable social housing stock, leaving only a handful of single person households still in residence. These remaining single tenants seem to be generally regarded by their landlords, the Welsh Assembly and by Flintshire County Council as little more than incidental casualties of a vitally needed transport link, which will cater for the ever increasing number of motor vehicles which run in and out of the region.

Recently, the Welsh National Assembly have added insult to injury for their remaining, seemingly unwanted tenants by introducing a highly expensive and generally unnecessary security presence on the site, which some tenants believe is both intrusive and ineffective.

Reacting to a handful of minor incidents, including criminal damage to a glass porch and the attempted theft of some roof lead, these new security measures have been speculated at costing the tax payer anywhere between £150-200,000 over the next 12 to 18 months, long after the remaining tenants have vacated their homes.

The irony of the situation is not lost on those tenants who remain Aston Mead. Had the Assembly decided to remove potential items of value from the properties once they were actually vacated by the tenants, then there would have been no target for potential vandals or robbers.

Alternatively, the National Assembly could have left its former tenants in place until such time as everything was in place for the road scheme to proceed. For a fraction of their reported expenditure on the new security measures, the Assembly could have maintained the properties through yet another winter, keeping the community alive for another year, easing pressure on Flintshire Council's housing register and offering the vulnerable single person households some degree of security for the next 12 months or so.

There is of course another ironic aspect to this seemingly unwarranted expense by the Welsh Assembly. The security company which has been employed to guard the site, Proguard, is entirely an English based company, so that all of these security costs almost certainly go straight across the border to be spent in the English economy, rather than within the Principality itself.

IS THIS WELSH DEMOCRACY IN ACTION? - PUBLISHED 20/09/07

Reading through some of the local media coverage which has been generated by the Public Inquiry into the proposed A494 road widening scheme at Queensferry in Flintshire, my eye was immediately taken by the obvious disparity between those residents who had written in support of the scheme and those who had voiced their opposition to any further expansion of this particular transport link.

According to one set of published figures, only 10 people had felt strongly enough in favour of the scheme to offer their support publicly, whilst 2805 opponents to the project had felt obliged to register their disapproval of the same to the Inquiry Chairman. Despite the marked ratio in favour of the anti-development lobby however, you could be forgiven for thinking that this fairly significant body of public opinion seems to be wholly regarded as being typically unrepresentative of local people’s views and opinions.

The growing tendency of local, regional and national governments to seemingly disregard any local public opinion which doesn’t suit their own predetermined plans and strategies, would appear to have become a common tactic employed by both public planners and their political masters, who incidentally are elected by the great voting public. It is perhaps understandable then, that so many people feel completely disenfranchised by the system and are abandoning the ballot box in their droves.

A sceptic might suggest that there is an underlying and implicit understanding within the political establishment of the country, that the great voting public might know who to vote for at election time, but they don’t really know their own minds, or indeed what’s good for them. Rather, there seems to be a tacit approach employed by most of the mainstream political parties that they rule the people, in spite of the people and certainly not on their behalf.

Although supporters of the road expansion scheme would rather have us all focus on the traffic volume figures, which indicate that the A494 is about to reach its maximum capacity in terms of its daily use, it is still nonetheless worrying, that at a time when governments are advising and legislating against the use of motor cars, they still continue to plan and fund even greater expansion of the transport network

Although the Public Inquiry into the A494 road widening scheme is supposed to be a full, frank and independent investigation of the scheme and its effects, in reality it cannot be seen as anything else but a ‘rubber stamp’ for its continuation. Given that the transport link has been virtually completed in and around the Sealand area, then surely its crossing of the River Dee is only a formality and consequently making any Public Inquiry a pretty fruitless exercise in terms of democratic choice.

It is perhaps ironic, that 800 years after the kingdoms of Wales were brutally subjugated by an English king, a Welsh Government Assembly, so long wished for by its native people, is itself choosing to disregard the views of its own citizens.

SHOULD WE ALL FEEL SAFER IN OUR BEDS? - PUBLISHED 28/09/07

Sir,

The extravagantly priced security measures which have recently been established at the soon to be demolished Aston Mead estate in Hawarden are obviously working, as the security men on duty were able to report that yet another empty property had been broken into during the early hours of last Sunday morning (23rd September 2007) Pity they didn’t think to do their job well enough to prevent it happening in the first place really.

Given the level of damage caused to the house by the thieves who got away with much of its copper piping, etc. it is quite apparent that they weren’t distracted from their labours by any sort of interfering watchman, who’s actually being paid to supposedly prevent such larceny. However, given the appalling level of service provided thus far, the recent break-in has come as little surprise to the dwindling number of residents that are still living at Aston Mead and the surrounding area.

With reports of guards ‘getting their heads down’ whilst they’re being paid to watch the estate, security teams working in excess of 24 hours shifts and individuals working alone during the night, it really should come as no surprise that the buildings and fabric of ‘Tin Town’ remains relatively unprotected from the occasional opportunist thief, who will no doubt take full advantage of the open invitation being offered.

As ‘guardians’ of the public purse, it seems surprising that little thought has been given to authenticating the nominated security company’s actual ability to provide the level of service and man power which is currently being paid for by the tax-payer and whether or not it proves to be real value-for-money. It should be an additional concern as to whether or not relevant Health & Safety regulations and Insurance cover issues are being compromised by these incidents of under-manning, excessive working hours, etc.

This clear lack of public oversight in respect to the services being offered by a private security company appears to be both typical and symptomatic of the Welsh Assembly’s Government approach to the Aston Mead estate in the final few months of its existence. With the current Public Inquiry ready to effectively ‘rubber stamp’ the WAG’s decision to proceed with the A494 Road Widening Scheme and site security issues having passed to the contractors, it should be no real surprise that the lives of the few remaining residents and the fabric of the now empty homes have become less important to the elected representatives and civil servants that are driving this particular project forward.

With a deteriorating and diminishing estate, missing or half-asleep guards and a public administration demonstrating little interest in those that still live at Aston Mead, it is little wonder that those of us with big dogs sleep better than most at night.

UNDER-60 SINGLES LOSE OUT WITH HOME LOSS PAYMENT SCHEME - PUBLISHED 01/10/07

Sir,

Once again it seems that the ever increasing numbers of largely unrepresented single person household and childless couples in the UK are losing out to their parental and elderly counterparts in respect to the current Home Loss Compensation Scheme.

Designed to cover both the practical and emotional costs of moving home for those whose personal accommodation is acquired by compulsion for some sort of local authority or governmental project, presently the typical level of financial compensation is in the region of £4500, which all things being equal would seem to many to be an equitable and reasonable amount of money.

However, things in the UK are not equal in any sense of the word, particularly for those that live alone or indeed for those couples who choose to remain childless. Almost all current local authority housing legislation, which has been enacted by successive governments of both persuasions, purposely discriminates in favour of families with young children as well as the over-60’s and therefore must be deemed to be actively acting against the interests of those single citizens who are aged between 18 and 59 years of age and who are in relatively good health.

This blatant inequality in the UK’s public housing sector, which has been fostered and promoted by central government since the Thatcher administration of 1979, effectively forces single people and childless couples into the private housing sector, along with its attendant exploitative rents, unreasonable terms and short-term and indeterminate tenancies.

Consequently, a family who lose their home to central planning are guaranteed alternative accommodation by statute and as such can use their £4500 compensation payment to furnish or decorate their new home, take a holiday or buy a new car. For the single person under 60 years of age or for childless couples under that age, then they typically have to use all or part of their payment to meet the exorbitant administration fees, bonds and deposits which are a common feature of our modern buy-to-let society and of the private housing sector generally.

Disproportionately taxed, unrepresented by the main political parties and seemingly an unimportant and often overlooked section of the UK electorate, it really is about time that all political parties started to seriously consider the needs and demands of this increasingly disaffected group of voters, before it comes back to bite them at the ballot box.

NEW THREAT OF FORCED EVICTIONS FOR ASTON MEAD TENANTS - PUBLISHED 12/10/07

Sir,

How refreshing it is to learn that the Welsh Assembly Government and its agents responsible for the A494 road widening scheme do not fail to disappoint when it comes to not meeting the needs of the few remaining single tenants at Aston Mead and are entirely predictable and consistent in their latest decision to employ the courts in order to effectively evict tenants from their homes, despite the fact that they have nowhere else to go. Still, this should be no surprise from an administration which has clearly demonstrated its willingness and readiness to ride roughshod over the views and opinions of the wider local electorate, never mind the real housing concerns of a few low income single person households.

Obviously reluctant to take any sort of legislative responsibility for the personal distress that their pet project might create for individual people, this particular Welsh government appears to be determined and content to simply hide behind its parliamentary immunity and authority, rather than using its much vaunted influence to actually resolve the outstanding housing issues of a handful of its own tenants

As a result of the intransigence and complete lack of imagination shown by the WAG’s Transport Directorate and its appointed agents we now have a situation where the matter is being dealt with on the basis of little more than public propaganda, general misinformation and pretty much anything but the real truth. It has been claimed by the WAG agents that many former Aston Mead tenants have found new and alternative private accommodation using Flintshire County Council’s housing ‘bond’ scheme. This is simply UNTRUE!! It has also been suggested that virtually all former tenants have left their homes willingly. This is UNTRUE as well and although many have few regrets about having to move, a number have only chosen to do so because of implicit threats to their statutory Home Loss Payment, the threat of indeterminate hostel living or simply through perceived ‘chivvying’ and bullying by the WAG and its nominated agents.

It has also been implied that the Home Loss Payment is a ‘substantial’ sum which would allow tenants to either buy or rent alternative private accommodation in the immediate area. Given that that the actual sum involved is a derisory £4500, is subject to any deductions deemed appropriate by the WAG and is only payable some weeks after the tenant has vacated the property, then that argument is purely fallacious. As for the idea that anyone might be able to use that money to purchase a private property, the very idea would be laughable, were it not tragically UNTRUE. With the current housing market typically demanding a 5% deposit which might be as much as £8000, then how exactly does £4500 help to meet and match that? That’s assuming of course that the tenant receives the full amount of HLP in the first place which many have not.

The Welsh Assembly Government and its agents seem to have deliberately adopted a defence of non-liability towards the fate of its current tenants at Aston Mead, which is not only disappointing and surprising, but for an elected Assembly government is frankly quite outrageous. As a publicly accountable administrative body though, the WAG’s Transport Directorate which is practically implementing the A494 scheme does itself not benefit from any sort of Parliamentary privilege and might therefore be regarded as owing both the public and its tenants a greater duty of care, than might otherwise be expected from a run of the mill private landlord

For those who remain essentially ‘abandoned’ at Aston Mead by the Welsh Assembly Government, Flintshire County Council and local Housing Associations, the prospect of being forcibly evicted from their homes is a deeply depressing and worrying prospect. But perhaps more importantly, is the thought that an elected Assembly, who are empowered by the people are now busily using both their political and legal muscle to legitimately dispossess citizens of their homes and at the same time showing little concern about their future housing needs. The sooner this particular Welsh government is seen in its true light and done away with through the ballot box, then all the better for those people whose very lives are blighted by such uncaring and undemocratic administrations

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