Quango can go!

A letter I sent to the Cambridge News following up their article on extensions to the Regional Spatial Strategy was published in today's paper edition, but not on-line, so I am reproducing it here:

Quango can go

The government is trying to impose a mind-bogglingly large number of homes on Cambridge on top of the excessive number already planned, via its undemocratic regional quangos.

While I am glad that the city Labour leader is questioning the latest figure (News, April 15), wouldn't it be better if he lobbied the government to follow the Conservative pledge to abolish top-down housing targets and put the responsibility back into the hands of accountable local councils?

We should try to kick the Regional Spatial Strategy into the long grass until we can have a change of government.

Andrew Bower
Coleridge Conservatives
Argyle Street
Cambridge

The pledge to abolish Regional Spatial Strategies and as a result allow local authorities to rewrite their local development frameworks is one of my favourite national Conservative policies (see Control Shift green paper on localism) and would be hugely beneficial to Cambridge, considering the threats of obscene over-development that are currently hanging over us.