Recap: our draft Local Plan was thrown out by the Planning Inspector, Mr Thickett, because – oh, so many reasons – mainly because pretty much all of the figures in it were either too old or too unreliable. We were told to go back to the drawing board.
A crucial aspect of a local plan is that there must be a “5 year land supply” – i.e. enough available land to meet the district’s agreed needs for the next 5 years to enable building to start quickly and to keep up with demand. Those local authorities which had persistently underperformed in this area over the previous period were told that they would have to have a 6 year land supply – EDDC was one of those authorities.
Whichever way EDDC seemed to cut it, we never reached that magic 5 or 6 year level. As a result, developers are pretty much given free rein to build anywhere in East Devon unless EDDC can provide very strong reasons that they cannot – this as a result of the Coalition government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) which ripped up all previous rules and gave the green light to building just about anywhere.
EDDC thereafter took this to heart and passed pretty much anything and everything that came its way (and is still coming its way) from developers. It was left to local communities (Feniton, Seaton, Newton Poppleford) to argue their own corners and find their own money to fight developers. In Feniton and Seaton the communities rallied and defeated them (only to find that, in both places, it seems the developers are coming back to fight again). In Newton Poppleford there was a perverse decision from the DMC – yes to a Clinton Devon Estates development but no to another developer at Badger Close using the same reasoning, but turned on its head for the latter.
EDDC promised the Planning Inspector that there would be a fast review (which had to include dealing with other local authorities in the area where they said that they had run out of space for their developments and needed us to build to take up their shortfall). The Inspector told EDDC that he would be ready to re-examine the draft local plan in October or November 2014.
Bear in mind that the new draft local plan once again had to go out for public consultation – a project that lasts at least 6 weeks and then demands officer time to collate the results. It became pretty obvious that EDDC was not going to meet this target.
Now we have confirmation that this is the case. At the next
Development Management Committee on Tuesday 26 August 2014 at 2 pm
a report is tabled on the agenda entitled “Objectively Assessed Housing Numbers for East Devon – Emerging Work.
On that agenda, currently (21/8/2014 10.40 am) there is supposed to be a link to that report but the link is missing so anyone attempting to read the report will not be able to find it. However, an eagle-eyed correspondent on Councillor Claire Wright’s blog has traced it (unfortunately the link given does not work) and no amount of searching on the EDDC website brings it up. However, this is what the document says:
“At this stage it is not possible to provide a timetable for completion of the full SHMA (strategic housing market assessment) work. There are complexities to the task that will need working through. However, officers of all the authorities involved in the commission are working together to come to a final set of recommendations on the objectively assessed housing numbers for the SHMA as a whole and for the individual authorities”.
It adds “In the meantime based on the available information we can only conclude that we do not have a 5 year housing land supply and continue to consider applications accordingly”.
It then suggests that the growth point area near Skypark will cause many businesses to set up and as a result housing should be factored in to address the extra jobs (see below for a post on those extra jobs which are mostly self-employment and particularly self-employment in the construction industry – ephemeral jobs).
So, the status quo continues. No land supply, happy developers, very, very unhappy residents.
East Devon Watch 
Apologies to anyone who might already have read my thoughts on these latest shenanigans over on Claire Wright’s blog but they are, I think, equally pertinent here…
I’m glad that Matt Dickins’ report is now available but I’m afraid I’m not buying the ‘website error’ explanation. Be that as it may, for those that are interested, here it is:
Click to access dm260814-emerging_housing_numbers.pdf
The following paragraph makes interesting reading:
‘2.1 The spring 2014 timetable for the SHMA work was that by this point in time [late summer] it should have been at or close to completion. Unfortunately there have been delays in production that have centred around complexities associated with modelling work and then integrating this into wider SHMA assessment.’
It would appear the goalposts are shifting all the time. Clearly, EDDC would have us believe that the expectation was the SHMA would be complete, or close to complete by late summer, ie now.
However, that’s not what was said in their letter to the planning inspector of May 22:
Click to access lettertomrthickett220514.pdf
In this correspondence they said the draft SHMA would be available in ‘early June’ – which can hardly be described as late summer – and that a SHMA workshop would take place later that month:
‘East Devon District Council and partner council’s [sic] have been advised that we should receive the draft SHMA in early June 2014, a SHMA workshop has been proposed for June 2014.’
Moreover, it went on to say that EDDC aimed to report the findings of the final SHMA to the Development Management Committee meeting scheduled for July 1.
I fully appreciate that the delay in producing the SHMA may, to some extent, have been due to circumstances beyond EDDC’s control but to suggest there was never any expectation of it being delivered before late summer is nonsense and, once again, seeks to take us all for fools.
Of course, the reality is that all this work should have been undertaken ahead of the local plan examination.
As we all know, that didn’t happen and planning inspector Anthony Thickett delivered a damning assessment of the council’s efforts. One might have hoped that would have jolted it into action and that we might, finally, see some evidence that those charged with delivering this project on our behalf – and, no doubt, paid handsomely to do so – were belatedly grasping the nettle and showing a bit of urgency. But not a bit of it.
Early June has turned into late summer and now Matt Dickins says:
‘It is likely to be months rather than weeks before we will have an objectively assessed housing need against which to revise our housing land supply figures.’
And all the while our beautiful East Devon countryside is turned into a developers’ free-for-all.
Surely, the buck must stop with the chief executive, Mark Williams, and the leader of the council, Paul Diviani. So, the $64,000,000 question is, what, exactly, can be done to hold them to account?!
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