Central Beds councillor voices concern Universal Studios Bedford theme park could impact fostering

During the Sustainable Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Thursday, April 10) councillor Matthew Brennan (Labour, Dunstable North) said: “I’ve been told that with large-scale development such as this, it can have a negative impact on fostering placements.

“Because people who had spare rooms that would consider fostering placements then take the decision to rent that space to workers of the development.

“I’d just like to know whether the administration has this in mind and what possible steps we could take.”

Leader of the council, councillor Adam Zerny (Independent Alliance, Potton) said this was a “really interesting question”.

“You describe a really important implication there, which I have to acknowledge had not occurred to me so far.

“If you’re thinking of things like that, there will doubtless be a hundred other implications, neither you nor I have considered,” he said.

Lorna Carver, the council’s director of place and communities, said anecdotally people who foster generally do it for different reasons, not just the money.

But added that the council is setting up an internal officer cross-council team.

“Because we will be a consultee to the application, the government will run the process and this will enable us to capture all of that kind of feedback to feed into the council’s response,” she said.

“We’re expecting only 30 days to be able to do that, so hence we’re kind of doing some of that preparation work now.

“The council will then gather all of that information across the various teams to put our formal response back to the government.

“Of course there’ll be positives as well as a result of Universal, and we need to make sure that then we can capture those positives and secure benefits for Central Bedfordshire residents,” she said.

Councillor Zerny said: “Bearing in mind the fanfare of the last 24 hours, whilst I wouldn’t wish to suggest that the government is predetermined in this decision, it would not surprise me if that decision was to give the go-ahead.

“It is very important the local communities do play their part in that decision-making process,” he said.