Holbeach developments and cost of living discussed in this week's letters page
We need to stop new developments
I attended the Holbeach Parish Council organised meeting (thank you, HPC) about the Boston Road sinkhole last Tuesday.
There were several things that struck me. This is a three-year-old running farce. Both Lincolnshire County Council and Anglian Water seemed rather vague about exactly what happened immediately after the hole first opened, though at the time they each tried to claim the other was responsible.
They appeared to have no idea what to do. Briefly, they have so far attempted to solve the problem by (figuratively) filling the hole with some half a million £1 coins of our money. All to deal with a damaged nine inch cast iron pipe, we we were told. So far, it is not yet resolved.
In my opinion the root cause of this and other issues with water supply and drainage is not just some flowing silt which has always been there. Rather that we are trying to support a large town with huge new developments on the crumbling infrastructure of the former small market town we were 50 years or more ago.
Acres of concrete now cover areas that used to sop up water, more toilets flush and tap water demand has increased, all straining pipework. The weight and frequency of new traffic, some of it very heavy vehicles, adds to the problem. There have been water main leakages in several other places, including Market Hill and with Battlefields area being hit quite often.
Residents in Boston Road have suffered considerable inconvenience, including noise, vibrations and claimed damage to their houses.
Of course there are also many other infrastructure problems that come with over development and too rapid growth. We all know what they are.
We need to stop new building of large developments until we’ve improved all our infrastructure. Use the cash generated by increased households paying rates and buying water service from Anglian Water to do this.
Insist that our elected representatives, councillors, scream loudly, often and use every trick in the book to stop inappropriate developments. There are ways to stop or delay new building. I have to admit that our MP Sir John Hayes, speaking at the meeting, clearly sees this problem.
Not the councillors though, who have largely remained quiet for years and usually vote to pass all such applications.
Sometime you have to make yourselves unpopular with colleagues to achieve results. Get on with it ladies and gentlemen or you will be replaced.
Paul Foyster
Holbeach agent
South Holland Independents
We all have to tighten our belts
Wake up Britain. We have seen our elected government face Brexit head on, we have conquered Covid-19
and helped with the Ukraine war relief. Now we must get our country back on its feet and with the latest economic situation this has not helped much.
Everyone is wishing our country to get back to what it was before, and all businesses to carry on
the same, but guess what? It will not. We have to accept the changes and put up with a lot of the losses and the new
challenges the country faces. We perhaps expect the Government to hand out relief packages in one way or another as everyone wants more, but where is the more coming from? Has the Government got a large sack of gold to dip into?
No. It all comes from our tax and the Government has the job of managing where the monies go. When the sack of Gold runs dry all taxes go up and we all suffer.
We all have to tighten our belts in hard times, some more than others. Those of us who experienced the war years know all about it –
now its the turn of the younger generations to take the same route.
It does not matter which political party gets the job, some balance the books,
others spend more than we have and land the country into greater debts.
Byron Hahn
Moulton
