Dear Neighbour
Very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.
We’ll be back in January.
In the meantime, please sign the petition …
http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/keepkemptongreen
Kind regards
Wendy, Jonathan, Alan and everyone else who has given so generously of their time, effort and money this year
Attached please find an email exchange from yesterday between KKG and Councillor Smith-Ainsley.
To be in a state of denial: Insisting that something is not true despite overwhelming evidence.
‘Nuff said.
Except to say that this is even more reason to sign the petition:
http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/keepkemptongreen
Dear Neighbour
You may remember three weeks ago we highlighted the site of the former Nurseries on Fordbridge Road which is up for sale. The land is Green Belt, yet the hoardings at the site say that the land has the potential for residential development. Further, Chancellors, the estate agents handling the sale, had an advert on the Rightmove website which stated that:
“Informal discussions have taken place with the Local Planning Authority with (sic) its development potential.”
It seems there are two adverts on the Rightmove site. One includes the phrase, the other does not. (See Document 72a attached). We asked Chancellors which is correct, but they have not responded.
The Council, however, says:
“No meetings have taken place between the Council, officers and/or members, and the owner, or agents for the owner, of the former Fordbridge Nursery site and associated sites since 1 July 2013”.
(That doesn’t necessarily mean there were meetings before that date. That was just the time period set out in the FOI request. If an earlier date had been set, it might have taken longer to get a response.)
The more questions one asks, the more questions one needs to ask, it seems. We’ll get back to you.
By the way, in answer to a question from a Councillor about this issue, Councillor Leighton, the Cabinet member for Planning, said that the mere existence (or non-existence) of such meetings was confidential. Well, the Council’s FOI officer, by giving a definitive NO answer, just proved her wrong.
As regards the Review of our Local Plan, we have also yet to receive a reply to the open letter sent to the Council last week. There is now a petition calling on the Council to fulfil their obligations and begin to work with local communities without further delay.
If any of Spelthorne’s open spaces are precious to you – whether you live in Spelthorne or not – please sign. Remember: All members of a household are entitled to sign if they wish to. Go to:
http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/keepkemptongreen
Kind regards
Keep Kempton Green
First we discovered plans by Spelthorne Council and The Jockey Club to build 1500 dwellings + commercial units on Green Belt at Kempton Park.
Then we discovered Council plans to build 6500 additional dwellings elsewhere in the Borough.
The Council is reviewing our Local Plan. The risk is that this review will remove Green Belt or Protected Urban Open Space status from our Borough’s open spaces in order to provide land to build these 8000 dwellings.
The only way we can fight these plans is to be involved in the review of our Local Plan. The Council itself is required to “work with” local communities from “the earliest stages of plan preparation” in “early and meaningful engagement”.
Work has already been done in compiling the evidence base for the housing targets. But local communities have not been involved, as they should have been. All this work has been going on in secret.
It will take “months, not weeks” the Council says, to work out how to “work with” local communities.
The petition calls on Spelthorne Council to start “working with” local communities without any further delay.
If any of Spelthorne’s open spaces are precious to you – whether you live in Spelthorne or not – please sign this petition.
Remember: All members of a household are entitled to sign if they wish to.
To sign the petition, go to:
http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/keepkemptongreen
The Council have promised to hold a public meeting in Sunbury to discuss Kempton Park.
At the Overview & Scrutiny Committee meeting on 25 November, Councillor Friday, the deputy chair of the Committee, said a meeting would be held.
The Leader of the Council, Robert Watts, and the Chief Executive, Roberto Tambini, were asked if they would attend. They both agreed they would.
No date was given, however.
The voice recording of the promise can be heard at http://youtu.be/1WytVwnV1mQ
Email exchange – HM, MB, DK, ML – set hares running
Letters to and from the Head of Planning
5 December 2014
Cllr Vivienne Leighton, Cabinet member for Planning
Mr John Brooks, Head of Planning
Spelthorne Borough Council
By email to cllr.leighton@spelthorne.gov.uk , j.brooks@spelthorne.gov.uk
cc: Spelthorne Residents Associations, Spelthorne Borough Councillors
Dear Councillor Leighton, Mr Brooks
Local Plan Review
Thank you for your reply to our 25 November letter, and also the notice posted on the Spelthorne Council website on 1 December:
(https://www.spelthorne.gov.uk/article/8951/Review-of-the-Local-Plan )
inviting the registration of interests for the Review of our Local Plan. Thank you for the publication with that notice of some of the documents we asked for in our previous letter.
You say in your reply that you envisage the timescale being “months, not weeks” before you will be able to confirm the arrangements the Council will put in place for consultation and involvement on the preparation of the new Local Plan.
It is clear from a number of documents which have come to light over past months that work has already been done towards the preparation of the evidence base for setting the housing target. Communities should therefore already have been involved, under the DCLG guidance that they “be involved from the earliest stages of plan preparation”.
Please could you explain why there should be further delay.
Further delay serves only to reinforce the idea, which is widespread amongst the residents of Spelthorne, that the Council is fully prepared to involve developers in the preparation of policy, and plans for construction projects, but will try their utmost to keep residents and local Councillors in the dark.
This certainly appears to have been Council practice in the recent past. Please see the attached email exchange between the then Head of Planning and various consultants to The Jockey Club, including the ubiquitous Mark Boyes of Aspire. In it, the then Head of Planning warns against saying anything “which might set hares running if someone picks up on this (Cllrs or a residents association)”. She then gives further tactical advice regarding his comments on the subject of Green Belt to David Keene (of David Lock Associates, Town and Urban Planning consultants to The Jockey Club), suggesting that his cause – and the Council’s – might be best served by him using “softer” language.
This is just one of many documents, dated into 2014, which prove this point.
Kind regards
Alan Doyle
for Keep Kempton Green
Keep Kempton Green 