I cannot conceive how this proposal would do anything other than encourage tourism and visitors to the area. If the enthusiasts behind the proposal didn't think it would be popular/financially viable then I doubt they would be bothering to waste their time and money. I have to say that this strikes as a fairly short sighted response, and the proposal is hardly likely to destroy the countryside, given that a railway line once exists there in the first place.

Undoubtedly the A21 needs to be upgraded, but its hardly a case of either or here. Whilst level crossings are by their nature a risk, the most dangerous are those without adequate gates, which I doubt is the proposition here.

Agree almost entirely with the premise of this article and would applaud Home Group for coming up with some innovative thinking especially around deposits.

However, what we need, and this was something I started to implement during my time as cabinet member for housing at Hammersmith & Fulham, is a right to buy part. Or more simply the ability for an existing HA or council tenant to be able to purchase equity in their home either with or without a discount. This is something which other local authorities have started to implement - Barking & Dagenham and Wandsworth being the two which spring to mind. Perhaps this would offer an easier route for the government rather than simply to transpose the LA RTB over to the HA sector, which of course already does have the Right to Acquire, albeit at very reduced discounts.

Personally I would have no issue with wider reform of RTB either, principally to include the ability to claw back the discount and a % of value uplift if and when an RTB was sold at a future point by the acquiring tenant.

But the biggest issue still relates to receipt retention for local authorities. It makes little sense for Treasury to claw back RTB receipts from LA, leaving them with only 1/3 for investment, whilst wanting them to build more new homes and chase government grant to achieve that.

A fantastic achievement by Cllr Burbage and his team in Windsor & Maidenhead. Good to see them continuing to show the way and demonstrate that it is possible to keep cutting council tax year-on-year whilst delivering better services. When in H&F we first proposed cutting council tax in 2006 the consensus in local govt was that it could not be done. Now 9 years later we have further prove that it can, even when local govt has seen its funding significantly reduced from central govt. All credit to RBW&M for this.

Whilst I wouldn't disagree with the broad thrust of the argument here the impact would equally be as great, if not greater, upon Cumbria and to a lesser extent North Lancs. Both of the border counties of Cumbria and Northumbria would experience significant unheaval, turmoil, but perhaps longer-term opportunities. However, as a Unionist I hope to god that it doesn't come to that. Whilst on the matter we need to get away from this fictious notion of English regions, there are counties and cities in England as the principal markers of governance and population, not some region where someone has simply drawn a marker around a geographical area. I thought, and hoped, regionalism was dead. I'm a Cumbrian, not a north-westoner. If you want to strengthen England simply decentralise more powers to the cities and to the counties and let them co-operate on a mutual needs basis, not create more structures of governemnt above.