Suffolk Coastal Policies

UKIP’s national policies are addressed to the people of Suffolk Coastal constituency as much as they are to the rest of the United Kingdom, but as your UKIP candidate, living by choice in Suffolk, one of the most rural of English counties, I recognise there are issues in Suffolk Coastal for which our national policies have special relevance.

These include:

East coast defences

  • A long-term programme (LTP) for defence against coastal erosion and inland river flooding. The coastal erosion protection programme is particularly relevant to the whole coastline from just north of Felixstowe right up to Wrentham, the north of the constituency.  The responsibility for our coasts and rivers will be transferred from Natural England to a section in DEFRA specifically charged with maintaining them.
  • A permanent end to mass immigration and therefore a complete change to population growth projections. This is particularly relevant to Felixstowe and Martlesham areas of the constituency because the Local Development Framework plans for some 3,000 new homes are based essentially on a population growth projection of an additional nine million people in Britain by 2032, which in turn is based on assuming an additional 300,000 per year of net immigration indefinitely. UKIP is adamantly opposed to this flow of people into an already overcrowded country1 from the rest of the world.
  • UKIP is also opposed to building large estates on green-belt land and will withdraw all planning “Guidance Notes” specifying minimum housing densities and maximum numbers of parking spaces.
  • Removing schools from LEA control through the children’s voucher system of paying for them, will allow decisions to be taken by voucher holders (i.e. parents) on whether village schools in particular should be retained, or indeed re-opened, case by case.
  • Rural Transport
  • Secure Energy

Tracking Votes in Suffolk Coastal

The following table shows that at the last test of voters’ preferences in Suffolk Coastal (June 2009), UKIP came second after the Conservatives, beating the LibDems, the Greens and Labour in that order.

Party 1997 2005 2009 (Euro)
Conservative 21,696 23,416 13,198
Labour 18,442 13,730 3,078
LibDem 12,036 11,617 5,769
Referendum 3,416 - -
UKIP - 2,020 8,342
Green 514 1,755 4,421
BNP - - 1,823
UK First - - 1,072

Footnotes

1. England is where the vast majority of immigration occurs and it is already the most densely populated major country in the world.