06 Sep 2024
The proposed acceleration of the Local Plan process has not gone down well with opposition councillors on the district council.
Cllr Simon Grover, on behalf of the Greens and Independents group, said: “We are very concerned about the Lib Dems’ decision to rush through the Plan process. Up till now, the Lib Dems have said the process was going as fast as it could in order for it to be done properly. Yet now they have magically found a way to cut significant time out. And they have rushed into it without a meeting of the planning policy and climate committee.
“The unavoidable implication is that we will now not be doing it properly. The Government has made it clear that Local Plans have to be completely sound and legally watertight before submission. If our Plan fails this test, we will be back to square one.”
Cllr Matt Cowley from the Conservatives said: “After years of dither and delay from the Lib Dems on the Local Plan, which have created a housing emergency and left our district’s Green Belt vulnerable to speculative development, we now see that for what it was: a political choice.
“They have repeatedly failed to take decisive action on the difficult conversations they need to have with voters – knowing that all along they had the ability to speed up that process. Our district deserves better.”
Local residents groups fighting against developments across the district have also been outspoken.
Paul King from the campaign group Greenbelt said: “I understand why the council is seeking to fast-track the draft Local Plan, which is to avoid an even worse destruction of our Green Belt than is already being planned, due to the greater requirement of the new NPPF that the new Government is proposing. They are therefore racing to get the Plan to Examination prior to the new NPPF being adopted.
“However the draft Local Plan has had no proper scrutiny up until now, so fast tracking it will ensure that there is no proper scrutiny at all. They are ignoring responses from the main Regulation 18 consultation that took place last summer, and ploughing ahead with their original draft. This is a disgraceful management of a very important process, and will lead to destruction of great swathes of Green Belt across the district.
“This planning department has so far overseen three failed attempts at drafting a Local Plan, so you would have thought that they might have learnt from their previous mistakes. Instead they are arrogantly forcing through a Plan that few are happy with, and now are using this new pressure to help them eliminate any lingering chance of common sense prevailing.
“Due to the poor level of scrutiny and adherence to consultation so far, it was already running the risk of being thrown out at the Examination stage, this course of action will increase that risk yet further.”
Gee Smedley from Team CLASH, campaigning to save the Green Belt in north St Albans, said: “We expected SADC to accelerate the Local Plan to avoid some changes coming in from the new Labour Government, although it is unclear if they can truly avoid these and what impact that will have on the quality of the evidence base and ultimately the ability to deliver a sound Plan.
“As it stands, the council is ignoring its own Green Belt Review, the primary starting point in any evidence base. This means they are already at risk of missing the vitally important process targets a sound Local Plan requires. This iteration of the Local Plan has had one party leadership and in our view they have failed to ensure that officers are delivering the high quality Local Plan our community deserves.”
Shirani St Ledger McCarthy, from Keep Chiswell Green, was cautiously open to the idea of accelerating the process, albeit with strong caveats: “The concept of accelerating the Local Plan, so we have a Plan in place even sooner than originally scheduled, is very attractive, particularly if the Plan were to be approved by the Planning Inspectorate at the district’s target under the Conservative government of 15,000 new properties to 2041, as opposed to the latest Government target of 26,000.
“Having an approved Local Plan should protect the district from speculative development and ensure that the new properties built are the right homes, in the right numbers, and in the right places.
“However, from what we saw of the Draft Local Plan at Regulation 18 stage, there are a significant number of failings in that Plan, not least the failure of the Plan to be precise and demanding of developers, requiring them to build as a priority what is needed in this district.
“The Plan had the opportunity to identify brownfield sites and to oblige developers to build on these first. It had the opportunity to oblige developers to build all the properties for which they have permissions before it permitted the destruction of nearly 2,000 acres of our Green Belt.
“The failure of the district council to give any public feedback on the many consultation responses it received to the Regulation 18 consultation, and, in particular, to modify the Plan in response to the serious and valid concerns of local residents, gives us no encouragement to back a proposal to accelerate the adoption of this Plan. This is a real catch-22 situation – accept the new Government’s target of nearly 26,000 new properties for our District, or accept a flawed Plan that still permits the destruction of 2,000 acres of our Green Belt and doesn’t give us the protections a Local Plan could give us.
“Our local Green Belt fulfills one of the five purposes of the Green Belt – to preserve the setting and special character of historic towns; St Albans and many of the district’s villages are nothing if not historic.
“The district’s Green Belt has been performing that purpose since the establishment of the Metropolitan Green Belt in 1955 but the Government, the Planning Inspectorate and the pro-development lobby largely ignore this critical purpose, often only considering the historic setting to be material when the proposed development is literally within a stone’s throw of an important historic building or location. It is critical that the wider area surrounding historic towns and villages is also protected before our history, the intended beneficiary of this protection, is swallowed up by new housing estates.
“This point must be made to the Government and an exemption sought, not only from the new target of 26,000 new houses, but also from the previous target of 15,000. Our district’s MPs and council must fight for the protection of our Green Belt. In addition to its role in protecting us from the effects of climate change and air pollution, our Green Belt must be safeguarded for the benefit of the history of our district and for the benefit of future generations.”
