Object

Representation ID: 22760

Received: 16/03/2020

Respondent: Mr Bryan Robinson

I am concerned at the over-simplistic principles for growth and the employment agenda arising therefrom. Growth seems to be assumed to be limited to more people employed preferably at higher income jobs.

The fallacy of this approach is that Norfolk has a historic low level of unemployment and therefore an inability of available labour to fulfil these ambitions, resulting in competition with other regions for this extra labour leading to inward migration. This in turn leads to more demand for housing and infrastructure. The housing need numbers in the consultation would be significantly less without this inward migration.

Another consequence of promoting competition with similar geographic areas both within and outside the UK is that there is often migration of labour and jobs away from the Norwich area as exampled by Colmans and Britvic.

It is acknowledged that land should be made available for employment opportunities but unfortunately the consultation does not indicate what the drivers for the locations proposed are and the impact elsewhere.

Can growth be achieved other than by more jobs? Growth is defined as increased output and which can also be realised by extra productivity per operative.

Despite the net loss of employment floorspace in the last decade, unemployment in Greater Norwich has fallen which would indicate that other factors are having a positive impact on the economy outside the unfulfilled allocations for office space in Broadland.

The GNLP lacks an understanding of these factors and do not consider other avenues for increasing the GDP of the area such as education and investment in technology. Both would assist the economy without the damage of inward population migration, more housing and more roads.

The specific growth area is set out in the proposals as the Cambridge to Norwich corridor through the city centre and finishing at the north/east growth triangle.

The towns in this linear development will all benefit from the growth investments but the strategy makes any proposals for other major towns outside this corridor.

Past policies for employment locations were haphazard and are now being repeated. An example is the location of the Food Enterprise Park at Honingham. A FEZ for food related activities was an ideal opportunity to help create employment in the countryside closer to where the crops are grown. Instead the various authorities supported the location on the outskirts of the city necessitating both labour on products having to use the road system.

Despite a £1m grant to the landowner, the single occupant is a processing plant for what is left of Colmans. We now have mustard seed being stored in the Fens, transported to Norwich for processing and then transported to Burton-on-Trent for final production. Previously the final production was at the same site as the processing so how can these extra road miles be good for the environment?

There are road restrictions associated with the locations which are impacting the designs of the A47 improvements between Easton and North Tuddenham. The grade separated junction at Blind Lane/Taverham Road is solely to service the Food Enterprise Park. There are still unresolved problems in that other HGV’s leaving Honington Thorpe Farms are prevented from using Blind Lane to access this junction and must still use Church Lane with implications for Easton.

This is another example of a poor planning decision for a vanity project.

Bluntly, I am unhappy with the extent of public money being given to a private landowner for a limited questionable economic return without any public debate.