Leicester Social Forum

As is nearly always the case I found myself in total agreement with Andrea Smith's First Person column, on the 31st of October. Predictions that the UK population is likely to rise to 70 million over the next 24 years, partly due to immigration, will probably provoke calls for some for even more curbs on immigration, but like Andrea I can see no intellectually coherent argument for stopping the free movement of people; we need younger working age people to support our increasingly ageing population and, personally, I feel that immigration introduces stimulating variety to our society.

The population of our planet is higher than is comfortable and still growing, but it is going to peak around the middle of the century and then start to fall. There is little that we can do now to stop the short term rise and in the longer term the problem of population will resolve itself, the important question is how it does so. With correct and socially equitable policies we could just about provide for the projected peak human population with a decent standard of living, in a sustainable way and without appropriating even more land for human use. Within very broad limits the most important factor in terms of environmental impact is not population, but the resources each individual consumes, which can vary astronomically.

Returning to the UK's population, the UK does not exist in isolation and, in terms of overall environmental impact, whether people are living in the UK, or elswhere in the world is not relevant, so nor is immigration. Nevertheless, as Andrea points out, we do need to think about how we are going to meet the housing needs of an increasing UK population with least impact on the environment. This doesn't necessarily have to mean lots of new developments on greenfield sites.

We should be looking first at existing unused housing with a view to taking it over and making available empty properties in areas of shortage (including some of the Royal families second homes). We should be looking at taking over wasted urban land, such as derilict sites and empty office blocks, in order to build new social housing. We should be looking at intervening to rectify the economic inbalances in our economy, which suck people into London and the South East. Finally, we should recognize that a lot of the increased demand for housing is arising not from increased numbers, but from people living in smaller households; and we should be looking at ways to encourage and facilitate people living in larger groups, where they wish to.

Malcolm Hunter
Leicester Friends of the Earth
& Leicester Social Forum
(in personal capacity)
96 Cedar Road
Highfields
Leicester
LE2 1FY
Tel: 07773 289 316