Correct, because that's what your posts suggest

Paul - we've discussed the issue of the LDP in depth on here. Full discussion can be found by searching the forum.

But the key issue here is feasibility.

The aim of the metro scheme is to improve public transport into Cardiff from the Valleys. But it will always be at least 45 minutes from Merthyr to Cardiff given the need for stops en-route. Together with further travel at either end, we're looking at commutes of often well over an hour in each direction. And, given most of the available sites are well away from the train station in Merthyr, a lot of people would simply drive - or have to drive to the station in Merthyr, clogging up that town's roads. That makes the option unattractive to many people. Furthermore, many people would want to live in Cardiff but not live in Merthyr - because an extra 3000 houses is not going to turn that into a thriving city with the kind of amenities Cardiff has now does it?

So instead of decamping to Merthyr and pushing up house prices sufficiently there to make development of expensive-to-develop brownfield sites economically viable - the development just won't take place. Merthyr will remain Merthyr and Cardiff won't fulfill its potential as the dynamic capital city of Wales.

This is the problem Wales has been facing for years - trying to push economic activity and people back up the Valleys, when what we need to be doing is adapting to the changed economic enviroment which makes cities the driving force for economic activity.

It might be feasible to get more people living in sourthern RCT, Caerphilly, and. But there the public transport isn't great and we would definitely have extra traffic.

I agree we probably do want wider regional planning, but to help get around very localised opposition - not to pander to it. I think with wider regional planning we'd still end up finding the feasible, sustainable and most economically beneficial option as being concentrating development around Cardiff rather than trying to spread it out in Merthyr, Aberdare, and Maesteg. Such proposals might garner support but they would not pass the credibility test.

The UK is poorer than it should be because we box in our successful cities with Green belts and restrictive planning. Even crowded countries like the Netherlands do a better job of this - and thats one reason why they much higher labour productivity.

Sounds as if you are saying that if the boundaries of Cardiff Council were say drawn up to include countryside in the Vale, Caerphilly and Newport, then it wouldn't be almost full up, in which case it would be ok to build at Waterhall.


Is Waterhall open space? Or is it agricultural land? A development of this scale would include plenty of open space anyway - public open space at that.

LDPs aren't really unconnected. But in case, even if the development planning system changes (as it might), you can't just stop planning!



Merthyr does have its own LDP you know - with housing allocations!

There is plenty of housing development already going on in the Valleys and other areas. Both Bridgend and Newport are having new suburbs created, Caerphilly has been building on brownfild sites for years and I can count five sites off the top of my head that are having this type of development in the town centre alone. Southern RCT had been growing in the last few years as well. Just drive through Llanharan and you'll see plenty of homes that have gone up in the last few years.

These are just some examples of places I frequently visit, let alone plenty of other developments planned in the LDPs of each authority.

I would add to what Kyle says.

Bridgend is building around 2000 homes at Parc Derwen, having a few years ago completely a major development of a similar size at Broadlands. And of course in the 1980s and 1990s there was the huge development at Brackla.

Caerphilly is having ongoing developments after, in the 1990s and 2000s, major developments to the west.

A couple of thousand new homes are planned to the South and West of Llanharan. New homes are also planned around Beddau, and around Church Village, and around Tonyrefail.

Major developments are taking place at Llanwern in Newport, and at Coed Darcy in Neath-Port Talbot. These are of course large brownfield sites, that is true, and it is great that they are being redeveloped. Now unfortunately, Cardiff does not have available brownfield sites on this scale. And those sites we do have - Ely Bridge, Dumballs Road, Roath Basin, are already earmarked for development, and are largely suitable for high density developments. Given the need for some lower density developments of houses rather than flats, greefield development, like in Bridgend, and sourthern RCT, is also going to be necessary.

Quoting from Bridgend Council's website:
"The Bridgend Unitary Development Plan (UDP) allocates 85 hectares of land to the north east of Bridgend for 1,500 dwellings and associated facilities. The area is known as Parc Derwen, and in accordance with UDP Policy H1(25) the Council has adopted the Detailed Design Code and Design Guidance for Parc Derwen, which will accompany and supplement the adopted Parc Derwen Development Brief."

So not your claimed 2000 homes but 1500.

If a new high-frequency railway was built to serve the proposed Waterhall and Creigau developments and was ready before the homes were ready for occupation then I, for one, would have fewer objections. But this essential public transport looks like a distant dream. Without it, Cardiff would grind to a halt.

The road system in Cardiff can only cope with a finite amount of traffic and that point has been reached. Roads cannot be widened and unless new roads are constructed the only option is a multi-billion pound investment in public transport.

The electrification of the south Wales commuter lines is in doubt and anyway, many of the proposed new suburbs are nowhere near a train line. The council should have proposed much higher density housing at Ely Bridge and Roath Basin. A new station at Ely Bridge and restricting provision for car ownership would mean that people buying homes would do so knowing that they would be reliant on walking, cycling or public transport. But no, there will be lots of space for parking in the new development.

I wonder if any of the appointees to government bodies who frequent this board have links to developers. Maybe they aren't serving the public interest with their unremitting shill-like behaviour?

I said about 2000 homes, and 1500 is close enough for the point I was making - that substantial greenfield development is taking place in other county boroughs (given the size of Bridgend town, its equivalent to around 12000 homes in Cardiff.. and it follows other large urban extensions in Bridgend).

I agree that public transport is really important. But at least at Waterhall it is an option, as it is at Llanharan, and in Trowbridge (no idea why that site isn't part of the plans anymore.. it should be!). In many areas, it really isn't an option - like Parc Derwen, or North East Cardiff.

And I disagree that density should be higher on the inner city urban sites. Why are young people being forced to live ever closer together in small pokey flats, as more substantial homes in the suburbs move further out of reach because of constrained supply?

Basing plans on assumed higher densities in inner city brownfield sites just doesn't stack up. The previous LDP banked on something like 1800 homes on the sports village site, instead of the 1000 or so that are now being developed - the old scheme just wasn't viable. Roath Basin is already at a high density and will provide around 1000 apartments. And the idea behind Ely Bridge is for it to be a mix of houses and apartments - a mixed community. Not another apartment development inhabited solely by young singles and couples without children (look at the demographics of the bay LTSOAs to see just how much 25 - 34 year olds dominate the new apartments; a few have babies but move soon afterwards). Now you may wax lyrical about the family sized apartments being built on the continent - but Wales is not on the continent, and Brits still like houses. As long as thats the case house builders will continue to tailor houses to families and flats to those without children.

Time for a referendum in the Victorian suburbs of western Cardiff to return Fairwater/Pentrebane back to green state it once was and make Cardiff even greener. I'm sure you'll give it your 100% backing, not only will it make Cardiff green but it will also reduce road traffic.

Trowbridge has been removed as a candidate site on the LDP? that is disappointing if true, there is a huge amount of land in both Trowbridge and St Mellons that could be built on. I wonder if that land is going into the Housing Partnership Scheme instead of the LDP.

@voice of reason

Are you really making a point that parc derwen is 2000 rather than 1500 or vice versa. You need to learn the concept of materiality. You do you argument no justice by being that pedantic. Give it a rest

So with all these proposed housing developments in both Cardiff and the surrounding towns, can anyone tell me where the tens of thousands of potential occupiers of these homes going to come from?

Just a couple of years ago Cardiff Council were justifying school closures with the fact that there was 8000 surplus places in the city.
That hardly suggests a growing city desperately needing tens of thousands of new family homes.

Or do the Council have one set of figures they use for speculative building projects and a completely different set for when it comes to implementing spending cuts?

The tens of thousands of occupiers come from:

a) Pent up demand, given the increase in house sharing and people staying at their parents longer we've seen in recent years
b) More births than deaths
c) Immigration

And, yes, Cardiff might have to start opening schools again soon. The issue is we had a massive fall in the birth rate between the early 90s and early 2000s, which meant a big fall in the school-aged population. Then in the early 2000s, the birth rate increased substantially, especially in our cities.

Now I don't know whether they've kept the sites of most of the closed schools - I hope so. But the rebound in the number of children will certainly be a challenge for Cardiff. Presently it looks worse at primary level as lots of people move out of the city by the time their children are secondary age (whether to get bigger properties, or for career reasons, I'm not sure).

Newport seems to be building houses like mad, aside from the massive Glan Llyn/Llanwern project there is of course Redrow's Mon Bank, proposed new developments at the former Tredegar golf course, Anglian Water want to build 200 homes at Celtic Way in Coedkernew plus another potential project at the old Whitehead Steelworks.

Cardiff is falling terribly behind in house building, the council needs to get a move on.

It's not really a competition - some of those new builds in Newport will be bought by people who might otherwise have bought in Cardiff.

Newport's advantage is that it has a large number of brownfield sites available like the old Llanwern rolling-mill site where Glanllyn is being built and the old railway sidings where Mon Bank is being developed. With a few exceptions most similar sites in Cardiff have already been utilised. The only big brownfield sites left in Cardiff that I can think of are all in the development pipe-line - hence the pressure on greenfield sites like Fairwater and Creigiau.

I guess a few more brownfield sites might come along - particularly some of the older retail parks which are beginning to look very tired and under-occupied.

A figure that was inflated by 33% being pooh-poohed by an accountant. Whoda thunk it?

Seems like you're a creative person.

Urgh. As I said, I was making a point about there being substantial building outside of Cardiff on greenfields - whether it was 1,500 or 2,000 or 2,500, that point would have stood. If it were 500 homes, it would have been a different kettle of fish.

Jantra was making a valid point about pedantry and materiality *in this context*.

Says the Labour appointee who is obsessed with a contentious property development, proposed by a Labour council after being ENFORCED by a Labour government. Gee I wonder why you are so enthusiastic?

You got a big mouth brah

If you think that using 2,000 rather than 1,500 significantly alters the point being made then you are mistaken. Focus on the idea being discussed rather than the detail. It's the Internet forum about development and not the lancet

I disagree. Spin doctors spin. They used to call it 'Cant'. It's a way of affecting the narrative in politics, culture or society. It's been happening for millennia. Bullshitters bullshit.
Funny that you, with your Libertardian credentials, are supporting the Labour Party in this. All the other parties oppose the LDP. You are clever enough to realise that land and property deals are where a lot of 'funny money' is made.

So why the volte face, Libtard?

The ongoing use of vacuous and gratuitous insults really does make it hard to take your other points seriously.

Are you referring to me? Which insults are these?

I was thnking about the Fairwater proposals and it seems to me that an awful lot depends on the Metro link.

Given the congestion that already exists on the Llantrisant Rd / Cathedral Road corridor and the PDR any development to the north west of the city is going to be problematic without decent public transport.

Funnily enough we have been here before - when Cardiff aquired it's first passenger only railway - the Coryton line. It came about by accident when the Cardiff Rail Company's plans for an additional route for coal trains from Pontypridd was sabotaged by the TVR and the line was truncated - first at Treforest and later, Coryton.

The presence of the line led, first to the construction of Rhiwbina Garden Village, and then to all that followed in Rhiwbina and Coryton. I wonder if Fairwater residents would be less concerned if the developments were contingent on the Metro opening first?

I know that Cllr McEvoy and some of the protesters also oppose the Metro proposal - particularly if it involves the Cowbridge Rd. bus-lane option, but development with a tram link would surely be preferable to development without one.

Cardiff council's LDP Background Technical Paper Number 5: Transportation says:

“All major development sites will need to be supported by significant new transport infrastructure and improvements to existing transport facilities in advance of its beneficial occupation.”

I repeat: "Significant new transport INFRASTRUCTURE AND IMPROVEMENTS"

If these are in place before any homes are occupied then I wouldn't object as much.The demolition of homes in Fairwater would be a local issue. But the public transport would need to be a train or tram and NOT a Bus Rapid Transit line. It must be electrified and at least 4 tph in each direction. Two thousand homes would be a much more sustainable target. The Waterhall and Creigau proposals are over-development.

As one who voted no, I am not opposed to development from a nimby viewpoint. I voted against this particular LDP which I see as a very poor piece of work. I agree with Voice that the essential points are overdevelopment and the total confusion over transport policy and infrastructure. How the council can ask us to support a an LDP which Cllr Patel (who I believe is now the lead councillor on this matter) has effectively rubbished by his catagoric assurances that several of the transport solutions will never be adopted is beyond belief.

If things will never be adopted then edit them out. As it stands the supporting documents might just as well say that all residents will be provided with helicopters or roller skates as the transport solution.

As an aside, what impact does the Cardiff Embankment (Dumballs Road) development have on the LDP?

Dumballs Road is one of the candidate sites in the LDP - and a roughly similar density to what is now proposed is assumed in it. So it has no material effect on the housing requirements elsewhere in the city.

2,000 homes is just about enough to support some ancillary services - a primary school, say. Bur it isn't enough to support large scale public transport provision. For that, you need a more substantial development to get passenger numbers. So a smaller development may actually be worse for congestion than a larger development that is of sufficient scale to help fund and justify better transport.

4 trains per hour is probably pushing whats financially viable though - probably 2 an hour, which in addition to the city line services would increase frequency to 4 an hour on the existing city line. That would be a benefit to existing residents of the development.

The discussions of the bus rapid transport system are part of the consultation documents associated with the LDP. They do not form part of the LDP itself. It was right to investigate this option, but it also seems right to now dismiss them. The LDP is a process as well as a final plan - and part of that process is examining different options before deciding on the more appropriate ones to choose.

I do think councillor Patel's handling of the situation has been pretty poor. That letter to the Echo was almost a parody of official-speak. The problem is that no councillor seems willing to stand up and say "this is why the development is the best thing for Cardiff and South Wales".. instead they seem to cringe and grovel about having no choice as the last LDP was thrown out by the planning inspectors.

Just to play devil's advocate here, this vote was clearly staged by "No to LDP" camp, so the fact that "only 31 in 10,000" voted yes doesn't surprise me (you guys had to throw some yes votes in there to make it seem legitimate!). If you were pro-LDP why would you turn up?

The reality that only 1,300 turned up to vote at all shows that the majority are either for the plans or apathetic towards them

That, my friend, is FACT

Mr anonymous, jantard, voice of reason

What makes you think I'm supporting labour? What makes you think I can't pick and choose policies rather than parties? Not all of us are tied to a party irrespective of whether we agree with their policies.

I just happen to think that development is needed or else Cardiff will stagnate

Not a fact. Conjecture. I walked round Fairwater for hours on the day and most peoplehad no idea that there was a referendum. It was poorly publicised by the council (I wonder why) and there was very little in the media.

FACT?

It's worth bearing in mind that the Metro proposal involves RCT as well as Cardiff. It's designed not only to serve the proposed developments in Waterhall and Creigiau but also the Llantrisant / Talbot Green area. Waterhall and Creigiau are designed as stops - not termini.

@voice of reason

You stated earlier that you were an expert and you then stated that experts can be also be right or wrong. Doesn't it follow that as an expert that you too could be wrong on this issue?

By protecting the community now it endangers the future of that community. Everything grows, from populations to weeds, that's life. By ensuring that homes are not built means we disperse people away from the places that they want to live. Communities grow, adapt, change but should be rooted in a common past and a shared future. By denying developments like this and countless others there is a danger that people within communities will become isolated, old and selfish. That's not what life is about, that's not what communities are about and it's certainly not what society should aim to become.

In my final post on this issue I'll tackle the claims 1 by 1.

1) Inequality rising by more under Labour than under any government for 100 years.

To paraphrase your overuse of capitalised words for emphasis. FACTUALLY WRONG. Using any measure of inequality you like - Gini coefficient, 90/10 ratio, mean-log deviation etc, inequality was broadly unchanged between 1997 and 2010. It was in the 1980s that inequality in the UK rocketed - just as in America. In the 1990s and 2000s, inequality rose substantially more in Scandanvia, Germany, even France - albeit from a much lower base. Look at any book on this topic to see that - from official DWP figures, OECD figures, EU Commission figures, anti-poverty charities, free-market think tanks etc.

2) Cricism of economics as an inexact science

Well done. You've grasped the fact that economics is just a set of tools to help guide thinking, not a crystal ball offering certain foresight. I never claimed it was. I have admitted I was wrong on the recession. But then again so were most other people. Its very easy to say there will be a crash. What is hard is to pinpoint when it will happen. In the UK, in previous recessions, the crash has been precipitated by a notable build up of inflationary pressures that just wasn't there in 2007. That's because it was a different kind of recession driven by a banking crisis. Those who are now feted for "predicting the crash when others didn't" had been predicting it was just around the corner for years. I'll make a call now - we'll have a recession in future! House prices will, at some point crash again... fete me when it turns out to be true (at some date in the future!).

3) Success in London and Cambridge

Prey tell. What are the factors that explain their economic success? I agree there's a more complex story to tell, particularly for London. But the reversal of the flight of activity out of cities to suburbs in the 90s is a global phenomenon, suggesting agglomeration is a key factor. And the timing of London's rebound in the late 1980s corresponds to financial deregulation, strongly suggesting that is a key factor too. London is certainly not successful because of its liveability - anyone commuting on the tube or train, or struggling to get on the housing market will tell you that! Again - look for materiality. I wasn't trying to offer a full thesis for why Cambridge or London are successful. I was just saying the most obvious candidates were not what you suggested, and if anything, would favour further development (not less of it) in these cities.

4) On the LDP system as a whole being corrupt

Where is your evidence for this? Why wouldn't that also be the case on a broader "regional approach"? How do you explain the consistent failure to build enough homes in this country if the whole system is set up so that corrupt landowners, developers, politicians and civil servants collude to build? Why aren't we seeing proposals for thousands of new homes in Monmouthshire, where property values are even higher? What about all the prosperous towns in the S. East of England that strangle development? Surely there'd be even greater scope for corruption there. Or is corruption something that only affects Wales, indeed, Cardiff?

As I said, there seem to be specific cases that need investigation. But the evidence is that we have too little rather than too much building in this country - which suggests the mechanism you argue for isn't that widespread.

5) On politics.

You clearly thrive on the intrigue and backstabbing nature of politics. I don't and can simply assure you I take no part in party politics in Wales, or the UK for that matter.

6) On everything else.

I take heart from the fact that you haven't really tackled any of my arguments about planning, inequality, economics, instead resorting to your usual bluster and threats. It means even if we have to agree to disagree - I know I'll have made the stronger arguments.

True. But I think the additional 8,000 homes or so being planned would significantly bolster the business case for the rail line. Llantrisant / Talbot Green are already kind of served by Pontyclun so on their own probably aren't enough to justify a new rail line.

Well if you dish it out, you must be able to take it.

By the looks of you, you dish a lot out and then take it all for yourself.

You have lowered the tone of the debate.

Luckily, hardly anyone really cares about your opinions.

There is a Wales-wide anti LDP movement growing with thousands of supporters.

Maybe you should instigate a pro-LDP group.

I bet that very few people would show even the slightest interest.

you are inferring that it bothers me. it doesn't, it is all water off a ducks back. maybe you get wound up by the musings of strangers on the wunderweb, but please appreciate that I do not. fire away your best salvo, if its amusing you'll find me laughing along, if its akin to what you have written thus far, I'll be taken to new uncharted levels of tedium.


the thing is you really believe this. have a read of this thread and appreciate the common denominator in all of this.


good, because people should be free to form their own opinions and no one should try and force their opinions on to others. perhaps you might take that on board


thousands from a population of millions. a real mass movement then.


why, the LDP has been accepted and is going ahead. Why support something that is a fait accompli? you're an odd fellow, you're asking me to fight battles that have already been won.


I bet more people are interested in x-factor than your crusade. that doesn't make it a just cause though.

I'm bored now, you've served your purpose for a few days, you've not really grasped the idea of internet debate or humour. perhaps you should try a different thread like 'what are you having for dinner'. you might find that more applicable to your writing style.