KKG – Document 37  KKG – Document 5   KKG – letter to Councillors 14 May 2014

Dear Neighbour

You may remember that a few weeks ago we circulated a document (KKG Document 5, attached for your convenience) prepared by Mouchel, The Jockey Club’s transport consultants, which laid down a timetable for the planning process for Kempton Park.

The topmost bullet point states:

Spelthorne Borough – scheduled 2014 update of Housing Evidence Base likely to set higher residential targets.

Spelthorne’s current housing target is for 166 dwellings per year to be built across the entire Borough. Spelthorne is currently ahead of this target, and can demonstrate that there is a supply of housing on stream to continue to meet this target for the next five years. This was confirmed in writing in Spelthorne’s 2013 Planning Monitoring Report.

The Local Plan is being reviewed, however.

If the current housing target were to be raised, as Mouchel say, then that would provide justification for Kempton Park’s Green Belt status to be withdrawn, and a significant housing development could easily be permitted on the Kempton Park estate.

Not only that. If the housing targets are raised so as to justify the development of Kempton Park, the higher target would:

Firstly, also immediately create a legal precedent that would put every other area of Green Belt and open space in the Borough at risk; and

Secondly, make it highly likely that the guidelines for housing density on Green Belt AND brown-field sites alike would also be raised.

A resident queried this statement by Mouchel with Spelthorne Council and received a reply which said:

“This is Mouchel’s own speculation.”

However, please see KKG Document 37, attached, which is an email exchange between the then Head of Planning at Spelthorne, and Mark Boyes of Apsire, The Jockey Club’s property development consultants in July last year. See, especially, the last bullet point in the top email:

“Need to flag up that I indicated there may be a delay in LP work on housing due to lack of staff resource. Add that I’m looking to re-jig the programme of work to bring housing higher up the priority list of evidence based work to be done.”

Also attached is a letter we have sent to all the Spelthorne Borough Councillors. We’ll let you know what they say in their replies.

As ever, this information is in the public domain. Please feel free to pass it on. Please encourage your neighbours to join the mailing list.

There is more to come, in due course, over coming weeks.

Yours

Keep Kempton Green