CAERLEON RAILWAY STATION

Some of us in Newport and Monmouthshire have long called for the existing railway stations in Newport and on the levels to be significantly upgraded as part of the process of creating a functioning South Wales metro.  

We need far greater investment in public transport, with a much better integration and coordination of rail and bus networks and integrated tickets across all services – with the emphasis on sooner rather than later.

The one thing missing from the recommendations of the Burns Commission which included recommendations for new stations at Tredegar Park, Somerton, Llanwern and Magor was any reference to a new railway station to serve Caerleon and Ponthir.

Our City needs ground broken sooner rather than later to bring the new railway stations into being, to provide alternative means of getting around our city and elsewhere, and improved connectivity to Cardiff, Bristol and beyond. 

The new stations are an absolute necessity, a railway station to serve Caerleon / Ponthir should have been included, as this would be a real asset to both communities.

The absence of a railway station to serve Caerleon and Ponthir shows an alarming if not acute lack of understanding of local transport issues, or at best a far to literal linear focus on the problems of the M4 or could have been simply a glaring oversight. 

In this case it’s absence ensures that the residents of Caerleon / Ponthir have little choice but to drive to Newport, Cwmbran and beyond even to reach another railway station. 

If the Labour in Wales government are serious about providing realistic and effective public transport for all parts of Newport and cutting congestion on the M4 and around our city then a railway station to serve Caerleon and Ponthir needs to be added to the consultation and the consultation needs be extended. 

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Another mini budget and another raft of headlines suggesting beneficial tax cuts for all… the reality is somewhat different for most people. While the current chancellor used Wednesday's statement announced a £10 billion pound’s worth of NI cuts for millions and an uplift in benefits. 

The Conservatives, no doubt thinking about the next Westminster general election, have claimed they had delivered the biggest tax cuts in decades in a move to boost the UK's stagnant economy and top up incomes.

Yet the reality is that the UK's overall tax burden is still on course to hit a record high. The percentage of the nation's income being paid in tax is set to rise to its highest level in 80 years, according the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). 

Household energy prices will rise in January 2024  putting more financial pressure on hard pressed energy consumers at the coldest time of year. The energy regulator Ofgem said the typical annual household bill would go up from £1,834 to £1,928, a rise of £94 or 5%. This rise in bills comes at difficult time for many people, so so much for tax cuts. 

Rather than focus tax cuts on the lower paid, historically they have favoured the rich and Corporations. Basically if we had not worked it out before, then it should be clear that somewhat blatantly there is one set of rules for the rich elite and one for the rest of us - particularly when it comes to taxation. 

At the end of the day, if you have more money than you can comfortably count, then you are wealthy enough to pay someone else to count it and someone else to look after it and also to protect your money from taxation. 

Now it is fair to say that one reasonable definition of taxation is that it’s the fair dues we all pay to participate in a functioning society. Our taxes can be used to fund projects (significant and not so significant) that benefit us collectively and to provide a safety net for society. 

Tax is probably always will be a subject that stirs people up on both sides of the electoral divide within these islands. For most of us taxation, regardless of level, is not a choice, our tax contributions are largely deducted at source, when we get paid, so we don’t have the luxury of choice in the matter nor the luxury of paying someone else to look after our money. 

Now when it comes tax, the Party formally known as New Labour, the Conservatives and the neo Liberal Democrats (to a degree) have all been hooked on the illusionary idea that either by cutting, reducing taxation for the rich (and corporations) or even perhaps by turning a blind eye to tax evasion, avoidance, etc - that wealth will trickle down from the top to the rest of us. The problem is that wealth just simply does not happen… it stays with the wealthy. 

This questionable theory was pumped out by Ronald Reagan (and Mrs T) in the 1980’s is still remains  largely dominant amongst right wing libertarians; yet it was not a new theory. Back in 1896 US Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan stated ‘that if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through to those below’. 

The ‘Trickle-down theory’ first appeared in the 1932 US Presidential campaign, when Democrats used it to hammer Republican Herbert Hoover’s plan to engineer economic recovery by making the rich richer.  An election that saw the election by a landslide of President   Franklyn D Roosevelt and saw the emergence of the New Deal - which saw massive state intervention as the US economy was restructured and rebooted. 

Some fifty years later even Ronald Reagan’s supporters struggled to sell the idea to their own party, George Bush (Senior) mocked Reagan’s theories of supply-side economics as ‘voodoo economics’ at least until he got the Vice Presidential slot. On this side of the pond there were even some monetarists who told Mrs T straight that the idea was nonsense and that it would not deliver results  - naturally she did not listen.

Across the pond, Reagan’s first budget brought in a moderate reduction in the basic tax rate, this was followed by the a drastic reduction of the top tax rate from 70 to 50 percent and later still to 28 percent. If the theory was correct then, the public coffers should have swelled with enough extra revenue to balance the budget within one to two years. 

Unfortunately, the theory was incorrect, within the eight years of Reagan’s Presidency the total Federal deficit soared from around $900 million to some $3 trillion dollars. What followed has been described as an orgy of speculation in stocks, shares and real estate (this was the era of ‘Greed is good’), ordinary Americans stopped saving and started spending. 

Through the 1980’s there was a near continuous decline in long-term capital investment – on which economic growth and jobs were dependent.  To make matters worse the USA went into recession and the Federal Reserve had to raise interest rates to hold down the inflationary consequence of the tax cuts, by 1981/82 unemployment in the USA rose about 10% for the first time since the aftermath of the great depression in the 1930’s.

The gulf between the wealthy elite and the rest of the population became a chasm, the rich got richer and parallels have been drawn between the 1980’s and the Gilded Age of the 1870’s (income tax was abolished in the US and was only reintroduced during the First World War).  

The 1980’s for the mega rich in the USA was an era of conspicuous consumption and extravagance – yet oddly enough very little of this prosperity tricked down to the American middle and working classes who have become poorer. 

Oddly enough average US family incomes did not return to the level they were at in the 1970’s until 1987 – wile this may have sounded good, the harsh economic reality was that Americans were now working harder and longer – in 1973 an average American worker had 26.2 hours of leisure time per week, by 1987 this was down to 16.6 hours per week and it’s fallen still further. 

One result was that jobs were also now less secure, Americans now worked on short-term of temporary contracts in increasingly un-unionised working environments - something that was also mirrored on this side of the pond. For blue-collar workers the 1980’s were a disaster, wages fell through the decade as employers threatened to move production overseas (in the 2000’s they did) because the workers had priced themselves out of employment.

The neo liberal / neo conservative right wing, in the US and in the UK crowed about how government should not interfere with (or regulate very much) the ‘free market’.  This hands off attitude was also duly applied to the US savings and loan industry, laying the groundwork for the collapse that was to follow in 2007. 

The only exception to the non state interference rule being that when things went really pear shaped (and the bankers nearly crashed the US and world economies) then obviously it was expected that Government would collect the tab. One side effect of all this was fraud, 650 savings and loan companies collapsed, with the $1.4 trillion dollar tab being picked up by the US government.

On this side of the pond, building society after building society were floated on the stock market – and within a few years were readily absorbed by increasingly greedy banks.  In the US, exploitative working practices and sweatshops reappeared encouraged by the effective withdrawal of regulation and inspection. 

The 1980’s also saw the growth of increasingly powerful media empires and a concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands despite much reputed mantras from government about greater competition and choice for consumers. More and more money drifted offshore particularly in these islands and keeping track of it became more and more difficult.

We are all still living with the consequences of that period in the 1980’s when an ideologically driven obsession with the ‘free market’ and ‘privatisation’. Heaven help anyone who dare question these sacred truths – the very heavens may fall. The problem is that the market was rather than being ‘free’ it was pretty much increasingly unregulated as Governments in the USA and the UK largely looked the other way – tax collections fell and ironically tax evasion soared.

This state of affairs was tolerated by the long time dying and much distracted Major Government and encouraged by the former New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and barely mentioned by the previous Con Dem government. Even the crash did not change things - there was some talk about tacking tax evasion which was matched by continuing (significant) staff cuts to HMRC - justified by the harsh financial necessities of austerity.

It is interesting because tax evasion and tax avoidance, at least outside of the UK, is often rarely out of the headlines with many heavily indebted governments being particularly keen to hunt down every tax dollar / euro / pound that is owed by tax evaders avoiding (unlike the rest of us) paying their fair dues to society. 

The Westminster elite privately at least regardless of whatever they say publically, appear to pay scant respect to the idea of fair taxation and fair representation, we now appear to be as close as possible to being governed by the sons of bankers and the sons of the City largely in the interests of the City (of London).

In the belly of the Westminster beast lies the questionable relationship with the City, which may explain why the former New Labour government, the former Con Dem coalition government and the current now unrestrained Conservative government ( currently we are on version 5 of that since 2015) remains very reluctant to do anything about the problem as some (but not all) of the city banks are hand in glove with drug dealers, dictators, oligarchs, rogue states and terrorists when it comes to money laundering. 

Now this inertia may be explained by the lure of comfy lucrative seats on the board for former Westminster politicians. There is something else, while the budget may be about feeding bankers and the City, it’s consequences may well have banished the illusion that the Conservative Party is even remotely economically competent - shattering this myth has taken almost as long as it has taken to expose the Westminster establishment’s cozy relationship with state aided and abetted tax evasion. 

This is the real problem in that all UK Westminster Governments (whether under Thatcher, Tony, Gordon, Dave, Teresa, Bozo, Truss or Sunak) pretty much since the end of Empire, have remained in it up to their necks when it comes to what has become state sanctioned tax evasion. 

As long as Westminster government continues to be indirectly yet heavily involved in aiding and abetting tax evasion. British Overseas territories, including the Cayman Islands, continue help to hide trillions of dollars from many nation’s tax authorities, and until the questionable relationship between Westminster and the City of London is resolved, little will  change, and the illusion of tax cuts for the rest of us, will continue to be rolled out before Westminster general elections. 

THE NEED FOR GREENBELT

The rapid expansion in housing and commercial developments around our cities, small towns and villages across Cymru / Wales over the last 45 years. Many of these developments often have little provision for public transport or alternative ways for potential residents to get around beyond using their cars beyond unfulfilled and largely undelivered promises. 

What has also happened  is the rapid loss of green spaces in and around our urban and not so urban areas and a largely unthought out expansion of our urban centres.

One thing that country lacks, aside from a serious well though out integrated housing structure plan, and a modern planning system and a realistic vision or plan for strategically developing our housing for the future, is green belt. 

There is a clear need for formal legally protected green belt, around Cardiff (including the Northern meadows), Newport, Cwmbran and Caerphilly along with our small towns in Monmouthshire: Abergavenny, Chepstow and Monmouth and elsewhere in Cymru / Wales.

The failure to create Green belt across all of our country, to fringe our urban areas, to help focus out of town and fringe of town developments, and to protect green spaces around, between and within some of our urban areas, has had significant consequences when it comes to urban growth. 

Green belt, if respected is still a useful planning tool, originally introduced for London in 1938, it was rolled out to England as a whole by a government circular in 1955 but interestingly enough it was only enough never rolled out here in Cymru / Wales. The original concept was to allow local councils to designate green belts when they wanted to restrict, control or shape urban growth.  

The idea worked and it worked well, as by 2007, Green belt covered something like 13% of England (about one-and-a-half million hectares) despite the best efforts of previous Conservative, New Labour and Conservative–Liberal Democrat Governments it is still remains relatively well protected by normal planning controls against "inappropriate development".

It is worth noting that there is no designated green belt in Cymru / Wales - save for one patch of notional green belt (actually a Green wedge) that lies between Cardiff and Newport. Scotland has seven and Northern Ireland has thirty - each has its own policy guidance. 

This absence of green belt in Cymru / Wales explains much - it has certainly contributed to urban sprawl and significant out of town and edge of town development - something that has done little to help our communities, economically or socially especially over the last 30 years.

The preservation of green spaces aside, comes down to planning permission (and ultimately our planning process), which can be a touchy subject in itself, especially when a development (whether for commercial, housing or energy development) is controversial or the final decision is made against the wishes of local people. 

In Cymru / Wales we face the same problem across all of our country, be it around Wrecsam, Carmarthen, northern Cardiff, Swansea of any of our smaller towns and villages. 

More locally, a number of these housing developments, which have done (and threaten to do) some pretty serious damage to our environment have come without any necessary improvements in infrastructure e.g new railway stations with reasonably priced (or even free), adequate and secure park and ride facilities at Caerleon (closed as a result of the Beeching cuts in 1962, in the UDP since 1984) not to mention proposed stations at Llanwern, Magor, Somerton and Newport West.

In our south east, along the coastal belt and in and around Newport and Torfaen (not to mention around Cardiff and Caerphilly) and across Monmouthshire the last thirty years has seen a significant if not spectacular growth in the amount of housing, a significant percentage of which has never aimed to fulfil local housing needs. 

As a result the infrastructure along the coastal belt between Chepstow, Caldicot, Rogiet and Magor struggles to cope with existing developments and this is well before the projected expansion of housing on and around the former Llanwern site (where the proposed railway station was recently cancelled) really kicks in.

Northern Newport has been linked to the south Cwmbran - something that has brought little material benefit to the residents of either urban area but has contributed much to traffic congestion. Cwmbran has been linked to Sebastopol bringing scant real benefit to local residents. When the housing development is complete - just exactly how much of it will be affordable to local residents remains to be seen?

The removal of the Severn Bridge tolls resulted (as expected) in a bump in house prices as people living in and around Bristol moved to cash in on cheaper housing over here.  

This understandably impacted on both affordable and available housing, developers will no doubt pitch their developments accordingly to cash in on perceived higher wages in the Bristol area and perceived cheaper housing over here (and no doubt our local authorities will fall over themselves to accommodate the developers wishes regardless how local people feel).

The, then, National Assembly (now Senedd)  should have known better and acted accordingly, the institution when established was supposed to have sustainability enshrined in its actions, but, at times you really have to wonder, especially when it comes to the impact of some of the proposed developments on our communities, whether it does or not. 

We need to develop and protect our own green belt around and within our urban communities – because once developed (or overdeveloped) it’s gone for good. We need to bin the fundamentally flawed UDP process and make our local government structure fit for the 21st century rather than the 19th century and accommodate re realities of devolved government. 

It should be pretty clear by now to even the most dispassionate of observers that in Wales, we lack a coherent national strategic development plan for Wales judging by the half-baked way local unitary development plans have been put together over the years.

The problem caused by a lack of protection to our Green spaces is aggravated by the fact that while one generation of elected officials (and council officers) envisages as a green wedge, green lane, etc as a social necessity they are often seen by following generations of elected officials (and council officers) as either prime land for development or a nice little earner to help balance out the books.

This means that there is a real lack of stability and a lack of a sustainable long term vision for many of our urban areas and impacts on our quality of life. 

The Senedd needs to grow up and act like the Welsh Parliament it has become - it should take the long view and legislate to create and protect Green belt land with full legal and planning protections in Cymru/ Wales. 

This might go some way to calming things down when it comes to development planning and might introduce a more long-term sustainable democratic element into the process. 

This is something that could be accomplished by creating Welsh Green belt land, as part of the process we also need an urgent and open debate into the planning process in Wales - something that has been long overdue.

Successive Westminster government’s (in England) talked about getting planning officers "off people's backs" with a relaxation of planning rules. When they talked about ‘people’ they meant developers. 

So far, as a result of the pandemic, the post Brexit Westminster ministers have yet to take the much trumpeted and much promised axe to red tape and planning rules (in England) in an attempt to boost house building and revive the economy.

Not wanting to be left out (and also perhaps bereft of any fresh ideas), a few years ago Carwyn’s Labour in Wales Government in Cardiff also pursued major changes to planning rules in Wales aiming to ‘tilt the balance in favour of economic growth over the environment and social factors’. 

That decision was in my opinion aimed quite specifically at overturning those few occasions when our Local Authorities have rejected developments (often at the behest of local residents) rather than putting economic needs ahead of economic and environmental benefits and will do little for sustainable, flood free development to deal with local housing needs let alone preserve our green spaces. 

It explains much of the housing overdevelopment in various parts of our country and it does not deliver for our hard pressed communities or our country. 

We need to look at championing the development of new homes in small-scale housing developments in both rural and urban Wales on ‘exception sites’, where land plots, not covered by general planning permission, will be capped at an affordable price designed to benefit those in local housing need with family and work ties to the area, and whose sale will be conditional on these houses continuing in local ownership in perpetuity. 

What’s left of our social housing stock that remains under the control of the housing associations needs to remain intact in order to meet the demand for homes. 

Along with developing social housing stock there is a need to introduce a more rigorous system in the allocation of social housing to give priority to those in local housing need.

Part of the problem is that our planning system, along with our almost nineteenth century local government setup is not designed to coexist with devolution or for that matter to deliver planning decisions with real and lasting benefits for local people and local communities. 

There is a real need for root and branch reform and reorganisation of our planning system; something the Welsh Government has failed to deliver with tinkering and tweaks to existing out-dated legislation rather than and real reform.

Our current planning system remains far too focused on railroading through large housing / commercial developments, that often bring little real benefits for local people and local communities and often fail to resolve real and pressing local housing needs. 

We need a fundamental change in planning culture to encourage appropriate and sustainable smaller scale housing developments, which are based on good design and actively promote energy efficiency and good environmental standards and that puts our communities first. 

Now this is something we are never going to get from a Labour in Wales government, in Cardiff, or a Labour in Westminster government at the other end of the M4. It’s time to change the way that our communities are run and to make the aims and objectives of Welsh government’s more responsive to our communities, and our country’s needs and concerns, rather than the needs and concerns of the Labour Party. 

THE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT ON THE RIDGEWAY

Newport City Council are currently consulting with the public regarding the possibility regarding the possibility of bullying houses on greenfield land on the Ridgeway.

Residents knowledge and input of how this development will impact on health services, shops, public transport, community facilities, schools, recreational space and local biodiversity is needed. 

Newport City Council planning development are eager to engage with the local community and will be happy to meet with residents (by appointment only) at the civic centre or Newport Central Library or through various ‘drop-in’ sessions. 

Email: LDP.consultation@Newport.gov.uk to participate in the consultation - which is open until 20th December 2023.

In Person and Drop in Sessions - Dates and Times: 

A formal consultation on the preferred Strategy began on 25th October 2023 and will run for 8 weeks until 20th December 2023.

In Person at Newport Civic Centre, NP20 4UR. 

** BY APPOINTMENT ONLY** - FRIDAY 9.30 AM TO 4.30 PM

There will be a number of Drop in sessions at the Civic Centre (no appointment is required).

These sessions are availability so people you can meet with members of the Planning Policy Team, where you can discuss any questions you might have about the Preferred Strategy.

Sessions will run on Thursdays 10 am to 4.00 pm (No appointment necessary). 

The dates and locations of the drop in sessions: 

Newport City Council, Civic Centre, NP20 4UR: 

• 23rd November 2023
• 30th November 2023
• 7th December 2023
• 14th December 2023