What a change! Definitely a touch of Dickens’ Uriah Heep…
The Chair of the Environment & Sustainablility Committee has written to the Inspector regarding the Extraordinary Meeting on 29 February.
You can read his letter by clicking here.
Note the change in tone from the letters written by our Paramount Chief.
Perhaps Cllr Beecher should run a letter-writing course for his fellow councillors.
Catriona Riddell – planning consultant, and Best Friend of our Paramount Chief (for a fee) – summed it up at the start of the Extraordinary Meeting of the Environment and Sustainability Committee on 29 February:
“The Council cannot withdraw the Local Plan from Examination, because the Minister forbids it. Only the Inspector can withdraw the Local Plan from Examination.”
And so the Committee duly resolved to provoke the Inspector into doing for them that which they could not do for themselves, by proposing VERY substantial changes to the existing draft Local plan, resulting in a 13% reduction in the housing target.
Standard procedure is that any decision made by Environment and Sustainability Committee would take the form of a recommendation to the full Council, whose members would then decide, but our Paramount Chief has decided to dispense with the standard procedure. So these decisions will go forward directly in a letter to the Inspector.
Three votes were held, on the topics of Green Belt Sites, Flood Risk Sites, and the Staines Development Framework. There were three options for each topic, except for the Staines Framework, which had two options.
Below are the three options decided upon. Those councillors who voted for each motion are shown.
1. Remove all Green Belt allocations from the Local Plan with the exception of the two allocations that meet the need for Gypsy, Traveller and Travelling Showpeople.
2. Keep all proposed flood risk sites but remove those at high risk of flooding and move some higher risk sites to later in the Plan period (11-15 years) to allow the River Thames Scheme to be operational and effective, the design code to be completed, and subject to no resolution objection from the Environment Agency.
3. Withdraw the Staines Development Framework as a core document.
The options availables, and the option chosen are shown in the table below.
As regards how the Inspector will react, it is not a binary position. The Inspector may indeed return the Plan to the Examination, including this substantial reduction in the housing target, but then the Council will need to brace itself for legal challenges from developers.
The Inspector could withdraw the Plan and tell the Council to start again and produce a sound plan, which is what the Paramount Chief wants, but which leaves the Borough exposed to an open-ended season of predatory planning applications.
Or the Inspector could be creative. Mr Bridgwater showed during the Examination hearings that he is a very creative man.
Keep Kempton Green 