07 Mar 2024
A proposal for all district councillors to take part in a full and comprehensive debate over the draft Local Plan fell on deaf ears.
Addressing last week’s Full Council meeting, Tory councillor Teresa Heritage put forward a motion calling for an Extraordinary Council Meeting to discuss and debate the Local Plan before the Regulation 19 documentation is finalised.
This is the phase of the process whereby local communities, businesses and other interested stakeholders will have the opportunity to comment on the policy content of a draft Local Plan before it goes to a planning inspector, but they will only be able to focus on whether the plan is legally compliant, if it complies with the ‘Duty to Cooperate’ with neighbouring local authorities, and if the plan is considered sound.
Cllr Heritage said: “Councillors and residents are very concerned about the impact of the site allocations identified for the Regulation 18 Local Plan Consultation in late 2023.
“This council has never had an opportunity to debate, as a whole body:
1. The district’s housing needs, housing numbers and density of new development;
2. The sites identified by the call for sites process;
3. The sites rejected by [consultants] ARUP in its Green Belt review;
4. The sites rejected by the administration following the ARUP Green Belt review, nor
5. The opportunity to discuss and digest the content of the revised NPPF [National Planning Police Framework] and its impact on the housing numbers for the district.”
But councillors blocked the motion, prompting furious reactions from local campaigners and residents alike.
Gee Smedley, on behalf of Team CLASH, fighting to protect the Green Belt in north St Albans, said in response to the outcome: “We are not getting the answers or the evidence we need from the planning policy and climate committee to satisfy us that the Local Plan process is being carried out effectively and we fear that yet again an unsound Local Plan has been formulated just to release land in the most prime property locations and not actually consider that many of the sites have not been supported for development by key statutory bodies and not suggested for development by the council’s own Green Belt review.
“Cllr Raj Visram and Cllr Alison Wren seem to think the only way to solve the issues are to write central Government, when what we actually need is clear leadership in the plan making process and a strategy to protect the Green Belt, as is now allowed in the new NPPF (National Planning Policy Framework).”
She added: “We voted for the Lib Dems in recent elections with many councillors being elected on the mandate to save the Green Belt countryside and deliver an improved Local Plan for our community.
“But over the last 12 months, there has been little tangible demonstration of those commitments being delivered.
“Local residents are ignored and the majority of Lib Dem councillors still behave like they are in opposition blaming everything on Westminster. They need to show leadership and do what they were locally elected for. Use the new planning rules to good affect and deliver growth in sustainable locations whilst protecting the Green Belt. Rather than continue to moan about it being someone else’s fault!
“We are fed up of seeing the majority Lib Dems not govern with humility and time and again shoot down good proposals just because one of the six non-Lib Dem councillors suggested it or that a local resident or campaign group asked a public question about it.
“It is not just planning matters that are stonewalled, but everything from litter to parking is being managed in a worse way than I have ever experienced in our wonderful city. Being publicly accountable is part of democracy. This is the most unhealthy version of local democracy I have ever personally witnessed.”
Chiswell Green resident Catherine Jessop said she has taken an interest in the development of the Local Plan after realising how important it is in stopping the speculative applications that are blighting the lives of the village residents.
She said she can’t understand how only six councillors of 44 present voted in favour of the motion to hold a special meeting for all the councillors to discuss the Local Plan in detail.
“It looked like all those voting against a motion that would have been beneficial for the district were Lib Dems. Why didn’t any of the Lib Dems vote in favour – not one ?”
Shirani St Ledger McCarthy, from campaign group Keep Chiswell Green, offered her take on the Full Council meeting and the decision to reject the motion: “The current draft Local Plan aims to facilitate the construction of over 15,000 new dwellings in the district between now and 2041, but it will also permit the destruction of nearly 2,000 acres of Green Belt to accommodate this quantum of new development.
“Some of us have been closely following the formulation of the Local Plan over many months now, and we have eagerly awaited the revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) which were finally published in December.
“We have heard council officers from the planning policy department and the leader of the council [Cllr Chris White] assure councillors that they would welcome the opportunity to reduce the district’s obligation to provide such a quantity of new housing and give greater protection to the Green Belt by incorporating any offered by these revisions.
“[Green] Cllr Simon Grover correctly quoted a number of these assurances from officers and the council leader during the Full Council meeting held on February 28.
“However, since the revised NPPF was published, we have not seen the review of these critical elements of the Local Plan that are causing so much consternation around the district.
“In fact, the opposite seems true; council officers are insisting that there are no new conditions within the NPPF that allow them to reduce the target number of dwellings, and they are pushing on with the evolution of the Plan, while insisting that the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) and the Planning Inspectorate are not permitting them to do anything else.
“Whilst the changes to the NPPF are not as far-reaching as Green Belt supporters had originally hoped, there are conditions which allow planning authorities with ’constraints’ – which includes the Green Belt – to demonstrate what amount of housing they can provide whilst still protecting the Green Belt.
“Paragraph 61 instructs local planning authorities to continue to use ‘the standard method’ to determine the minimum number of homes needed in their area, but also clarifies that the figure produced by the standard method is ‘an advisory starting-point for establishing a housing requirement’.
“It acknowledges that ’there may be exceptional circumstances …. which justify an alternative approach to assessing housing need’.
“Paragraph 145 specifies that ’there is no requirement for Green Belt boundaries to be reviewed or changed’ but acknowledges that ‘authorities may choose to review and alter Green Belt boundaries where exceptional circumstances are fully evidenced and justified’.
“Paragraph 146 goes on to say that ‘before concluding that exceptional circumstances exist to justify changes to Green Belt boundaries, the strategic policy-making authority should be able to demonstrate that it has examined fully all other reasonable options for meeting its identified need for development’.
“These policies were reinforced by Mr Gove, himself, when, in December, he stated, ’the Government is ensuring it is clear, there is generally no requirement on local authorities to review or alter Green Belt boundaries if this would be the only way to meet housing need.”
He continued, ‘Where a relevant local planning authority chooses to conduct a review, existing national policy will continue to expect that Green Belt boundaries are only altered where exceptional circumstances are fully evidenced and justified’.
“Since the conclusion of the public consultation on the NPPF last year, which informed the changes that were published in December, there have been 18 decisions nationally on planning appeals for residential development in the Green Belt.
“Of these, 15 have been refused, demonstrating the application of the policies contained within the NPPF, and in particular, the protection of the Green Belt. In the recent decision on the planning appeal at Tollgate Road, Colney Heath, the Inspector spelled out in his report that housing delivery shortfall, as calculated by the standard method, does not tilt the planning balance to allow development on the Green Belt.
“Amidst all this contextual evidence, our council is ploughing on with their plans to build over 15,000 new dwellings and destroy our Green Belt, and insisting they have no choice.
“There were valiant and repeated efforts by Cllrs Theresa Heritage, Simon Grover and David Mitchell to call the attention of the whole body of councillors at the Full Council meeting to the disastrous direction in which the district is being pushed.
“It was therefore disappointing that the motion proposed by Cllr Heritage for a specific meeting to be arranged to allow all councillors to discuss the Local Plan in detail was not supported by the full cohort.
“Despite the vital questions being continually raised by certain members of the planning policy committee, it is very concerning that some councillors are still ignoring the facts when these are highlighted to them and blindly placing their faith in the guidance of officers who have ’got it wrong’ in numerous previous failed Local Plan attempts.
“The inability of the planning policy committee to hold the officers to account currently looks like it will result in a Local Plan that, upon examination by the Planning Inspectorate, will be judged to be ‘unsound’. “This will be yet another failed Local Plan attempt and developers will be jumping for joy with the prospect of another five years of opportunity for speculative development in our district.”
A spokesperson for St Albans Liberal Democrats said: “There are a number of reasons the Liberal Democrat administration rejected the request for an emergency council debate on the Local Plan. The first being that there is no emergency. Everything is on course, as recently confirmed in writing to the Secretary of State. For further details, the council’s letter to the Secretary of State is available on the district council website.
“The Local Plan is very much in hand. The Local Plan is guided by an expert committee, which is open for the public and all councillors to participate. There was also an opportunity, taken by many campaign groups, councillors and residents, to comment on the first draft of the Local Plan. This opportunity (Regulation 18), generated 2,744 pieces of written feedback which are now shaping the work of the committee as it moves towards the next consultation (Regulation 19).
“Next Tuesday there is a routine meeting of the planning policy and climate committee which will be debating the Local Plan, including anyway questions raised by Cllr Heritage. After the last two Plans failed, we cannot allow our attempts to be derailed. The derailment of this Plan would be disastrous to residents as uncontrolled developments would then occur, risking the putting of anywhere up to 64,000 homes across most of our local landscape.’”
