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.
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.
Periodically, Spelthorne Council holds meetings between the political leadership and the Borough’s Residents’ Associations. If you had attended the last one, on 26 October, you will have been struck that the current political leaders of this Borough are very adept at blaming other people for problems they created themselves. Again and again, it happened. At one stage, in response to criticisms from the Associations, our Paramount Chief tried to blame the Associations themselves.
“I feel like you’re putting me on trial for decisions taken by the Council as a whole,” she complained.
Well…er…yes. The buck stops with you, Cllr Sexton. You are the Paramount Chief, after all. You make all the decisions, and your deputy agrees with your every word.
And all the while Little Chief Bateson sat nodding his head dutifully in agreement with her every word.
Cllr Sexton, of course, blames the Ministry for intervening, to stop her withdrawing our Local Plan from the Examination process completely, binning it, and starting again from scratch. At vast unbudgeted expense. (With Cllr Bateson nodding in agreement with these excuses in the background) You can read her (and his) complaints here.
Well, the Minister has replied. No doubt on legal advice, she has dismissed every excuse made by Cllr Sexton, and told her to get on with it.
You can read the Minister’s letter here. (Rachel Maclean was replaced as Housing Minister shortly after this letter. But the intervention in Spelthorne’s plan was by Michael Gove, her Secretary of State, so the letter is official rather than personal.)
The latest excuse (in a list of previous excuses) for delay at the last Extraordinary Council Meeting, for a further “pause” in the Examinaton in Public of the Local Plan,was:
“Extend thepause in the Examination timetable until the proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework have been published (expected in the autumn) before determining the next steps and take immediate legal advice to confirm the validity of the minister’s directive”
And just how is that threat of a Judicial Review of the Minister’s intervention going? Paramount Chief Sexton, two days ago, blamed any delay in taking the Minister to court on the Minister herself: “I am waiting for a reply from the Minister to my letter.”
To the Council Offices in Knowle Green last evening (25 October) for the first pow-wow between residents’ associations and the new Sexton Paramount Chieftaincy. Sat next to her was her deputy, Little Chief Running Horse.
At one stage the discussion turned to the topic of predatory development – a topic of much interest these days as the Borough flounders with no valid Local Plan, raising the severe risk that sites in the Borough – whether Green Belt of Brownfield, large or small – will be prey to predatory development, or planning-by-appeal.
Little Chief Running Horse said:
“Last week the Planning Committee considered the Running Horse application [where a developer wishes to build a retirement complex on Green Belt – our comment]. I can assure you that the Local Plan has nothing to do with that application.”
We beg to differ, Little Chief. As we and others pointed out last evening, predatory development, or planning-by-appeal, takes place at a higher tribunal, when, if the Borough Planning Committee refuses an application, the developer takes it on Appeal to an Inspector citing the lack of a valid Local Plan, and therefore the inability of the Council to prove a five-year supply of land. It is no use hiding behind the Borough Planning Committee. It hasn’t happened yet for the Running Horse site, but we wouldn’t bet against it.
And the reason we say that is because the developer threatens to do it in their application.
which is publicly available on the Council’s website. This is a document written by one of the developer’s consultants and submitted as part of the application. You will find it illuminating reading, not least the following paragraph 1.3 which we reproduce here for your convenience:
Dear Little Chief, you are a member of the Planning Committee, and should really have read the application documents before making a decision on it. You really need to up your game and provide better answers than you did.
As promised, below is the second follow-up letter from the Minister to the Leader of the Council.
We understand that the Council’s response to this second letter from the Minister will be sent to the Minister tomorrow, and published at the same time.
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.)
We also understand that the Minister has now sent a further letter to the Council asking to set out to set out the exceptional circumstances as to why the Direction should be lifted. When we get a copy of it we will post it.
Keep Kempton Green 