But report stays confidential! Puff job? And no mention of 5 year land supply …
Here’s EDDC’s update on the situation:
“As part of East Devon District Council’s ongoing commitment to finalise its Local Plan with the East Devon Local Plan Inspector, the council’s service lead for Planning Strategy and Development Management, has written to the Inspector to update him on progress made with the East Devon Local Plan Examination.
The letter confirms that East Devon District Council is expecting to receive – on or before Friday 13 February 2015 – a draft report of the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA is a multi-authority commission by East Devon, Exeter, Mid Devon and Teignbridge Councils and Dartmoor National Park Authority, with Devon County Council also being a partner), which we commissioned, together with a number of other studies, in order to establish a robust understanding of the objectively assessed housing need in East Devon. At this stage, the SHMA report, which is being produced by our appointed consultants DCA, remains highly confidential as it is still a work in progress, with findings yet to be made conclusive.
While the SHMA report was being produced, it became clear that housing needs, potentially arising as a result of possible future job growth, warranted particular attention. As a result, the multi-authority partnership (comprising the five Devon local councils, as well as Dartmoor National Park Authority, as listed above) commissioned Edge Analytics to undertake specific modelling work to establish the relationship between job growth and housing requirements. In addition, East Devon District Council has also commissioned work by Ash Futures Ltd to specifically advise on future job growth levels in East Devon. We have received draft reports from both Ash Futures and Edge Analytics and we will be pushing for final speedy conclusion of all reports.
East Devon District Council’s Leader, Councillor Paul Diviani said: “We welcome the imminent arrival of the SHMA draft report, this week. These three reports are an integral part of the East Devon Local Plan. Their undertaking – involving a significant number of other local authorities – has been an enormously complex process, which has taken longer than would have been desirable.
“The benefits of undertaking these reports should not be underestimated. It clearly demonstrates that best practice is at the heart of our decision making and confirmed the need for an altogether more substantial and complex end piece of work and has fully justified the need for additional consultancy support.
“We are very much aware of the need to finalise our Local Plan, but at the same time we have to take the reports with proposed changes to the Plan to our members for consideration and consultation. We had envisaged that the earliest we would have been able to take the reports to our members would be March or early April 2015. The process of consultation would then take around six-weeks. ”
East Devon Watch 
It all seemed so simple back in2012, or so they would have had us believe!
At that time, the East Devon Extra, a publication from the EDDC spin department, popped through our doors. Headlined “Facing up to the planning challenge”, EDDC then went on to tell us how wonderful and capable they were and how everything would be hunky dory with the Local Plan by 2014. Well the doubters knew better and have been shown to be correct.
May I reprint a couple of sentences from the EDDC document dated November 2012.
“Councillors have a mandate to lead and, when called upon, lead they will – to ensure that East Devon’s Local Plan meets Government requirements. On these pages is a timetable showing the work we have been doing, when it started, where we are now, and where we know we have to be within the next year or so”,
and elsewhere,
” A Planning Inspector will examine the Draft Local Plan and a final version is set to be adopted early in 2014″.
These are the same people who are behind the above report on their ‘ongoing committement’, and the same ones who know best about the vanity new HQ project.
Leadership is not a quality that has been demonstrated in this matter. Incompetence, now thats a much clearer element.
See http://www.eastdevon.gov.uk/facing-up-to-the-planning-challenge.pdf
LikeLike
Smoke,mirrors and verbal diarrhoea … We should already have a local plan, and these inept councillors should be grovelling with their tails between their legs! Not fit for purpose say I.
LikeLike