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* * * News for 11th September 2002 * * *

All of Medway: 11th September 2002

houseYet More Housing Imposed on Medway

The Deputy Prime Minister insists on even more houses in North Kent.

This information, divulged during a public presentation before Medway Council's Regeneration and Community Overview and Scrutiny Committee last night, is that Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is "banging tables" to speed up the house-building programme in the south-east of England, and especially North Kent.

Yet another 120,000 homes are expected to be built in the south-east, apparently in addition to those already specified, and they need to be built quickly. Failure to meet this and related targets will apparently mean a lack of so-called affordable housing for workers, it was declared during the presentation.There are also stipulations coming from the Deputy Prime Minister on numbers of jobs that are required to be created, said Marc Hume, Chief Executive of the Thames Gateway Kent Partnership.

This is part of the brownfield site development that has been stressed so much in recent years, even though the definition of a brownfield site can sometimes be extremely misleading and potentially very damaging, as in the case of Rochester Airport.

All of this is further proof of the present Government's attitude to Medway and some other parts of south-east England as a convenient place to drop in any major projects that Ministers want, whether they be cement works, airports or so-called "affordable" housing.