An Academic Question

Tomorrow sees the press launch of the Christchurch and East Dorset Draft core strategy prior to submission of the complete Local Development Plan for ratification and subject to the inspectors report inclusion as the overall guidance policy for the Borough for the next ten years or so. This is a prodigious piece of work which covers some important aspects as to how we are going to deal with necessary growth in our local economy, the resulting increase in housing need added to the already considerable deficit in housing including affordable accommodation for Christchurch people. It has also thrown up an interesting conundrum which could ,in my opinion have considerable effect on what we are trying to achieve in making our community an even better place to live. It also highlights an anomaly which again is exercising me. The conundrum is that Christchurch is in fact a high employment area so we enjoy low unemployment and as this we intend to maintain and indeed improve. The problem is that within this statistic is a relationship with young people who are not in education employment or training and this is not only higher that the national average but twice that of our East Dorset partners. The anomaly is that our borough demography tends towards the elderly so why is this happening? So the very people that we will need to rely on in the future are not benefiting from the economic environment we are developing and I have to ask why. Is this to do with our well fare system, our education system, just who do we ask? Maybe we should be asking the young people involved and getting to the heart of the problem that way but I have to say I feel very uncomfortable that should this trend continue it will begin to impinge on other social concerns like crime and disorder!