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.
Click here to read the letter.
Yes. So would we.
In other news, it seems that our Paramount Chief has abandoned her plans to replace the Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng as MP for the Spelthorne constituency …
We already know that Council Leader Sexton likes to write to the Minister.
You can read her various missives here.
On 11 December her tone changed when writing to Lee Rowley, the new Whitehall Minister, for the first time. And she dropped her threat to sue the government (always an empty threat in any case).
But her requests for a face-to-face meeting remained the same throughout. She must feel that she can charm the Minister into giving Spelthorne a free pass. Who knows. The members of this current Spelthorne coalition have never been accused of living in the real world.
But as we have said before on numerous occasions, it is no use arguing that Spelthorne is special. Every borough in the country thinks it is special. If the Ministry gave way on one Borough, every other Borough would be clamouring for special treatment.
So, last Friday, 26 Jan 2024, the new Minister replied to Cllr Sexton. “Thanks, but no thanks” to her demand for a meeting…
And just in case she missed the point of his letter:
“I look forward to further updates on progress on resumption of the examination hearings.”
“Get on with it…”, in effect
You can read his letter here.
And if Cllr Sexton thinks that the new Minister is going to be more malleable than the Minister he replaced, then she should think again. Last week, the new Minister wrote to Mole Valley District Council, another Surrey Borough, ordering them not to withdraw their Local Plan from the Examination process …
Council Leader Sexton has been railing against the Whitehall Housing Minister for months, threatening legal action against the Ministerial intervention while demanding an urgent face to face meeting with the Minister.
Click here
and here
to read her previous letters.
Her language in Council meetings has been equally intemperate.
But now, in the stand-off with the officials, she has blinked.
She still demands a face to face meeting. You can read her latest letter here.
It is a mystery why she thinks this will change anything. Council leaders and officials have been writing to the Ministry and meeting with the Ministry for years, each time trying to get the housing targets for Spelthorne reduced. And each effort has failed.
It’s all very well saying that Spelthorne is special, but every Borough in the land thinks the same. If the Minister concedes to Spelthorne’s demands he will have to concede to the demands of every other Borough as well.
The first Minister’s letter to the Leader of the Council was sent on 15 September. So the Council is due to report to the Minister’s officials, as per her instruction, by next Monday, 16 October at the latest.
The reports will take the form of update meetings.
We look forward to reading the records of the proceedings of those meetings. There is no reason not to make them public.
Guide to Image
Red Cross: voted to delay at the second, or first and second, ECM.
Yellow Cross: voted to delay at the first ECM only.
Top row: Cllr Arnold; Cllr Baldock; Cllr Bateson; Cllr Beatty; Cllr Beecher; Cllr Bing Dong
Third row: Cllr Boparai; Cllr Burrell; CllrButton; Cllr Caplin; Cllr J. Doran; Cllr S. Doran
Second row: Cllr Gale; Cllr Geach; Cllr Geraci; Cllr Gibson; Cllr Grant; Cllr Gyawali
Bottom row: Cllr McLuskey; Cllr Nichols; Cllr Rutherford; Cllr Sexton; Cllr Turner; Cllr Williams
Initially, Spelthorne’s party leaders asked the Inspector to “pause” the Examination in order to train new councillors. At the Extraordinary Council Meeting on 6 June, councillors changed their minds and voted for a three month “pause” to review the Local Plan. At the Extraordinary Council Meeting on 14 September, they changed their minds yet again – voting for an indefinite pause until the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill completes its journey through Parliament. There is little doubt that councillors would have voted to bin our Local Plan entirely, if the Minister hadn’t intervened to prevent them from doing so.
So, given that binning our Local Plan is off the table, what will it be next time? A “pause” until there is world peace? A “pause” until Prince Andrew becomes King? A “pause” until snowballs have a chance in hell?
The image above shows the number of times councillors have voted to “pause” our Local Plan. (Please note: Cllr McLuskey, in silhouette, is no longer a councillor.)
See also The Buck Stops Here
You will recall the Whitehall Minister recently reading the Riot Act to Spelthorne Council, warning them not to vote to withdraw the Spelthorne Local Plan from the Examination in Public.
You can read the Minister’s letter here
Well, the rioters took no heed of the warning, instead voting to “pause” the Local Plan indefinitely, which amounts to the same thing.
Read the full article from the Surrey Advertiser of 23 Sep 2023 below.
To read the Agenda Report for this meeting, please click here.
Keep Kempton Green 