Babergh Development Framework (3)

One of the anomalies thrown up in the briefing was that we are providing for about 9,700 new jobs in Babergh by 2031. The question was asked how come we are creating four new jobs for every home to be built. We were told that the figures were not directly comparative – but by pressing the point we were told that some of the jobs were to be created on the Ipswich fringe for Ipswich people, since there was a shortage of land for job creation in Ipswich. The reason for this shortage is because Ipswich had encouraged businesses to move outside their boundaries to be replaced by housing. Businesses bring no direct monetary benefit to the local authorities – instead it goes to the Central Government and is then redistributed. So where is the logic in providing for jobs which have no direct benefit to our tax payers and which instead leave us with the pollution and other costs associated with providing business infrastructure. We were later told that some of the 9,700 jobs were associated with previously approved planning applications. However the underlying questions were not answered – instead we were told that it is not a simple as that. Fortunately/unfortunately we ran out of time before simple answers could be provided.