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StopKIG has proof that
French insurance giant, AXA, has been concealing its
real purpose for developing land below the Kent Downs
near Maidstone.
AXA is prepared to pay £1.5 million MORE for the land if
it gets planning permission without having to build a
rail freight depot.
Sun Life (part of AXA) signed an Option on October 20,
2003 to buy Leggat family land for £8.5 million but with
the price reducing to £7 million if planning permission
came with a condition attached requiring them to include
a rail head.
This exposes as a sham AXA’s claim to support government
policy to get freight off the roads and onto railways.
StopKIG has warned
from the outset the AXA-KIG plans were a flimsy pretext.
What they really want is to get planning permission for
this land at any cost, so they will even pretend to go
along with government policy, even though this site is
entirely inappropriate.
Their objective is to turn this land into yet another
massive unsightly area of industrial units and
warehouses, doubtless with retailing, and the Option
proves that. They simply do not care about the terrible
impact it will have on the North Downs Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty and the local communities, as
well as the rest of Kent. It’s hypocritical and
deceitful of AXA to tell the public it wants to get
freight off our roads when it is prepared to spend one
and a half million pounds more to buy the land if a rail
depot isn’t part of the deal.
AXA Sun Life seem to make a habit of this kind of
behaviour. In December 2004 they were fined £500,000 by
the FSA for seriously misleading their customers in
their advertisements. The FSA said at the time it was
the highest advertising fine ever imposed and would have
been much higher if AXA hadn’t confessed and
co-operated’ (To read the full press release from the
FSA
click here)
This reinforces our call for people to boycott AXA
products. They are being ‘somewhat economical with the
truth’ over their intentions for the site – you cannot
trust them, and they are using OUR MONEY to do it. Do
not take out any policy connected to AXA or Sun life,
such as PPP Healthcare. If you are able to cancel
existing policies – even better!’
AXA are obviously quite prepared to do or say whatever
they feel is necessary in order to get what they want,
including being less than honest with the public. It
seems that when AXA gives us an assurance, we cannot be
as ‘life confident’ as they would like us to be. AXA
KIG’s own figures for a road rail interchange predict
400,000 lorry movements a year – that’s 1100 a day,
every day. If AXA are allowed to build warehousing and
industrial units, how many more lorries, vans and cars
will use the roads? The pollution and threat to the
environment is even worse than we feared. |
