NEG celebrates Local Election results: a victory for democracy and common sense

The No Expressway Group ran a vigorous social media campaign during the recent local elections. With scarce resources we were able to target only those incumbents across the Arc who were members of the Ox-Cam Arc Leadership Group (ALG) that, with Whitehall, is deciding the fate of the five Ox-Cam Arc counties.

Our campaign made very clear what are the implications of the Ox-Cam Arc proposals for local communities and the natural environment. Although we may be two or more years away from many of the significant changes of these proposals, parts of the plans are already in place, for example, the four new towns proposed West of Cambridge, and the Oxfordshire Growth Deal that involves 100,000 new houses in Oxfordshire under current Local Plans; four times the number actually required by the local population.

Our social media adverts on Facebook were seen by over 138,000 viewers, and generated an additional 2400 viewings of our website.

The results were spectacular. James Palmer (Conservative), Mayor of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Local Authority lost to Nik Johnson (Labour). Ian Hudspeth, Chair of the Oxfordshire County Council, erstwhile Chair of the Oxfordshire Growth Board and County Council member of that board lost to Andy Graham (Liberal Democrat). Both Mayor Palmer and Cllr Hudspeth were vociferous supporters of the Ox-Cam Arc developments and had spoken at numerous meetings in support of the Arc.

Two other members of the Arc Leadership Group may also have lost their seats at the Arc Leadership table because their parties lost overall control of their respective Local Authorities; Peter Marland (Labour and Leader of Milton Keynes Council) and Steve Count (Conservative and Leader of Cambridgeshire County Council).

The one common factor in these results is not the political party, but the individuals’ or their party’s support for Ox-Cam Arc developments; developments that have NEVER been put out for public scrutiny and, even now, are refusing public engagement in developing the plans that will affect the future of the 3.7 million present Arc residents.

NEG recently applied to become a member of the Local Partners that are deciding the future of these plans (we said that we would only take part as long as we could critcise the plans where we felt it necessary, and issue dissenting views). We were refused on the grounds that the Local Partners have already been chosen. They are the lead Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), Local Authority representatives, the Arc Universities Group and Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). Few of these have been democratically elected and none at all has been elected for this particular task.

The only chance we had to express our disquiet at what is happening is in the recent local elections. Well, we have done so, and with spectacular results.

We hope the authorities all across the five Arc counties take note of this result and re-assess their enthusiasm for the Ox-Cam Arc project. NEG offers to work with all the new incumbents and any other sitting members who want to see sensible development of our five counties and not development dictated from Whitehall and driven by property, development and land speculators for private gain.

You can read our press release by clicking on the image on the right.

A small plea.

NEG is a very small and voluntary organisation, supported only by donations from members of the public. We pay absolutely no-one for all the work we do, with the single exception of some help we received with social media messaging during the election campaign (most of us are too old and crinkly to understand social media). Keeping NEG going, however, is not cost free; our website and MailChimp email services must be paid for and the Facebook adverts alone, to achieve these Local Election results, cost over £1,000. If you feel you can support us please donate now. If you feel even more generous please consider a small, monthly donation by direct debit (the donations page has the option to make yours a one-off or monthly donation). Our donations page is here and it is surprisingly simple to complete (even we old crinklies can do it!)