The floodgates to failure?
The Thames Gateway is a bit like our increasingly erratic weather: everybody talks about it, but no one does anything. And the Thames Gateway is rapidly disappearing up its own unsound foundations.
The simple idea of building 120,000 homes somewhere between Stratford and Sheerness in Kent, which will be more affordable than doing it in London, has proved irresistible to that icon of simplicity, John Prescott. But governments stopped building houses 25 years ago, so the Deputy Prime Minister has been expecting Britain’s private housebuilders, possibly the most venal of all entrepreneurs, to build those affordable homes, as well as the roads, railway stations, schools and hospitals — and the flood defences — to “sustain” them. Unsurprisingly, the builders have stayed away in droves.
The Treasury’s recent decision to cut almost £15 million from the Environment Agency’s flood defences budget could be the final straw.
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The Government has just chosen Judith Armitt, the obscure chief executive of Medway council, to be the Thames Gateway “Czarina”. Perhaps Ms Armitt should consider spending some of her six-figure salary on an ark, or a lifeboat, with which to brave the Gateway’s rising floodwaters.