THE TIERS OF DOOM

It turns out that 4NW describes itself as the ‘Regional Leaders Board [or ‘Forum’; they don’t seem to be too sure which] for Northwest England’ and has somehow shouldered responsibility for housing, planning, transport and economic development.  Since it’s also going to take ‘tough decisions’, that’s a lot of responsibility for 23 of our more politically motivated citizens to assume on our behalf, particularly when 4NW turns out to be yet another undemocratic body (okay, before anyone yells at me, the Plank/Forum includes local councillors as members but the electorate doesn’t get a say in who they might be or whether we want to keep them).  The existence of 4NW obviously takes the pressure off GONW having to do anything (you remember:  part of Two Bog Seats’ Northwest Regional Assembly was rebranded 4NW and the bit which was left over became Government Office North West so that we wouldn’t notice we were paying barrow-fulls to keep another load of unelected never-sweats that nobody wanted in the first place in expense-cushioned comfort).  Now 4NW has cottoned on to that trick and appear to have set up a Regional Strategy Team so that they won’t have to do so much talking either.

The reason for this all coming to light is that 4NW (whatever that stands for; they don’t say and I’d have thought RLBfNW or RLFfNW would be more logical) have come up with a partial review of the North West Plan (aka Regional Spatial Strategy just to keep us on our toes) published by GONW in September 2008 (yes, that’s right, only a year ago).  Here, I must go off on a tangent.  The Plank reckons it works in partnership with the North West Development Agency (with whom they SHARE AN OFFICE IN BRUSSELS) and GONW, so I’m obviously right about GONW not having to do anything otherwise why wouldn’t they have undertaken the review themselves?  Where was I .... the NWPPR aka RSSPR concludes that we should stop using cars and thinks that limiting the number of parking spaces is a good wheeze that should work.  Accordingly, they’ve come up with an ‘Accessibility Questionnaire’, the results of which will determine how few car-parking spaces should be allocated in new business and industrial developments etc..  The score is based on whether those developments are close to train and bus stations and frequencies of transport services etc. and the bigger the score, the smaller the parking allocation.  Is it just me or don’t journeys have both a start and a finish?  I know I’m being selfish but Shocklach scores zero on Plank’s questionnaire, so not being able to park at a workplace just because it scores the maximum 47 is not clever.  Even if it was possible to find a way to get to work 20 miles away, the accessibility of that site would be irrelevant in terms of any ability to get home again.

You’ll be relieved to know that the consultants responsible for the ‘sustainability [sic.] appraisal’ of the NWPPR aka RSSPR concluded in its 167-page report that ‘it is technically quite difficult .... to provide a detailed assessment of the new [car-parking] standards’ but that ‘this policy generally performs better than the previous one, essentially due to the fact that there is more “granularity” in the standards’.  Now that’s money well spent.

Oh, one last thing.  Someone from the Parish Council rang CWACC to ask them who 4NW were and the answer was ‘never heard of it.’  For once, my sympathies are with CWACC and I’m not going to mention ducks.  Damn!

Theoghinus Nuttors, 27 August 2009.