Poor Journalism

Normally this part of the website is for news but, as The Newport Advertiser last week saw fit to print errors about the four Borough Councillors, this item states the facts of the situation concerning the extra housing which Newport is compelled to accept.

1)The target of 1000 new houses was the result of central Government direction to Telford and Wrekin, and most other councils, to build a Government selected number of houses. The then Labour controlled Borough Council allocated 1000 to Newport, and presumably communicated their decision to Westminster.

2) The Government Inspector, who oversees these schemes, recently made two important decisions, firstly that the requirement for Newport should be reduced to 600, and that houses built from April 2006 should all qualify as part of the 600. Thus the Civic Society was correct in the first figure of 600, although forgot to mention that the original 1,000 had been the level laid down by the old (Labour) administration at Telford, and also forgot that something approaching 300 dwellings since 2006 would count towards the 600.

3) The decision on the number is the prerogative of the Inspector, and is not open to challenge. (The advertiser front page article, quoting the Borough Chief Planning Officer, implicitly accepted this, although still condemning the councillors for neglecting Newport.)

4) Councillors are instructed to maintain a silence on such matters until the Council has fully considered it, partly because they could be gagged by the Standards Board regulation which discourages comments before decisions are made.

We thus have the Advertiser swallowing the assertions of the Civic Society, although the editor knew that the Inspector's decision was not open to debate. If either had stopped to ask why councillors were happy at the Inspector's report, among other things that "affordable housing" would figure largely and that the Town is required to accept no more than an average of about 35 new houses per year, - regarded as manageable. Most of all councillors were happy that a Government/Labour imposed burden of 1,000 houses had been reduced to about 300 over the next few years.

What motivated the Civic Society we may never know - but their information was at best partial. The Advertiser sank to a new low, in many people's judgement, and seems to have been motivated by exasperation that the councillors would divulge nothing before the Council meeting. The editor had only to wait a few days at most, when the situation would have been clear. Everything is now in the public domain.