More reactions to the rejection of EDDC’s Local Plan , are flooding in to EDA. This one, sent in from Sidmouth,  is typical.  It has a powerful postscript:

‘The Inspector’s conclusions:
• The proposals are unsound in every respect. EDDC has ignored all advice and evidence.
• East Devon has no Plan.
• The whole process has been flawed. The proposals were not evidence-based.
• No adjustments can be made. The Council must start again.
April 2014

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) means:
There is now nothing to stop developers doing whatever they want in the Sid Valley and AONB.
Paragraph 14 insists development proposals must be granted permission “where the plan is absent or silent or relevant policies are out-of-date.”
The people of East Devon will now have to prove that “any adverse impacts would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits”
Paragraph 32 states that a refusal on highways grounds can only be sustained if the impact is “severe.”

The only people that can fix the NPPF are in Parliament.
Write to Hugo Swire at swireh@parliament.uk
 
East Devon Local Plan takes a step forward (April 2012 EDDC press release)
EDDC is moving on to the next stage in its Local Plan process – creating the planning blueprint for the district up to 2026.
The Local Plan Panel is handing over responsibility for taking the policy document forward to EDDC’s Development Management Committee – its parent body.
The disbanding of East Devon’s Local Plan Panel comes as the Government publishes its National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which came into force on 27 March.
East Devon’s proposals are now coming together after years of preparation, but there’s still time for a degree of public consultation in the coming months before the policy document is finalised by EDDC and passed to the Government for ratification.

Councillor Paul Diviani, Leader of EDDC, takes up the story: “I have just returned from a meeting of the Local Government Association’s Rural Commission in London. Change for Local Government continues apace”.
“Having now been published, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) puts decision- making firmly in the hands of elected local politicians. If the NPPF is silent, local Members of the Local Planning Authority will decide”.
Local Planning Authorities have until March 2013 to put their Local Plans in place and EDDC is on course to achieve that target. From that moment on, the Local Plan will become the major planning guidance document for East Devon.
For the next year, existing policies still carry the most weight, even if there is limited conflict with the NPPF. From March next year onwards, these local policies will be judged against how they match up to the NPPF guidelines.
Paul Diviani again: “At East Devon, the Development Management Committee (DMC) will now drive the Local Plan agenda and will report to Full Council. A schedule that came to the Cabinet on 4 April detailed all relevant further consultation with the people of East Devon and we have to adhere to that schedule to meet the Government’s deadlines. Everyone is encouraged to examine that schedule to see where representation can be made.
“In the meantime, I would like to thank everyone who has taken part in this protracted process, but especially the Local Plan Panel, in its various guises. Over time, there have been four Chairmen – Alderman Ray Franklin and Councillors Graham Brown, David Key and Mike Allen.
“Whilst the Panel was not empowered to make decisions, it performed a valuable function of consultation and evidence review, which will enable DMC and the Council to move on to the next stage. I am indebted to the Chairmen for the arduous task they have completed under considerable pressure. They and their Panels deserve their well-earned rest!
“Kate Little, Matt Dickins and the other Officers are to be congratulated on the speed and diligence of the evidence collation and I am confident after the final tweaks, that we have a document worthy of inspection and subsequent adoption”. April 2012

“LOOK ON MY WORKS YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR!” ‘

Much time and effort has recently been put in to trying to work out who is to blame for the current problems we have with our Draft Local Plan.  Various groups (including EDA) have been suggested as being responsible for the current situation, even though EDA was not in existence when the figures for the Draft Plan were submitted to EDDC by its Planning Policy officers and gave no evidence either to the Local Development Framework Panel nor to the Inspector.

It is far too late for blame.  Responsibility now lies with councillors and officers to give the Inspector what he wants as quickly as possible.  Only they can do this.

Can they do it?  We have to hope so and we must all give officers and councillors all the support they need to get their facts right and get their evidence in as soon as practicable so that developers will have no opportunity or excuse for building on land that is not meant to be available to them.

The effort to find scapegoats to blame needs to stop and the action needs to start.  Looking for scapegoats is wasting valuable time.

The Leader of East Devon District Council says he is “relaxed” about the failure of the draft Local Plan at its first hurdle.  He said:

“In the circumstances I am relaxed about the extra work we have to do. We will now put together an action plan showing what we will be doing and when. We hope to go back to the inspector in the autumn with the extra information he needs”.

Can we trust someone who is so relaxed to motivate others (the same people who gave the Inspector the first draft plan which took 5 years and one false start to produce) to give the Inspector what he needs and to give it to him quickly enough to put a stop to the development frenzy that shows no sign of abating and every sign of increasing during this policy vacuum?

Is an “action plan” enough?  Is” hope” enough?  Is being relaxed the appropriate way to deal with this crisis?

http://c2cplanning.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/oops-developers-get-a-hammering-from-eddc-cllrs-for-making-hay-while-the-council-get-slapped-on-the-wrist-for-advancing-a-flawed-local-plan/

... If Council resources cannot be made available and directed towards plugging any perceived “policy vacuum” quickly and accurately, why is the development industry the bad guys? If there was a competition for heads in sand…..

http://sidmouthindependentnews.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/the-east-devon-district-council-press-release-on-the-failure-of-the-local-plan-dissected/

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Green-fields-vulnerable-local-plan-declared/story-20918066-detail/story.html

If you can hear popping sounds, it’s the sound of champagne corks flying across East Devon as developers celebrate their biggest boost in years. Planning Inspector Anthony Thickett has pronounced on the EDDC draft Local Plan, and if you’re anything other than a developer or someone happy to sell off green fields to cover with concrete, it’s very bad news indeed.

It’s impossible to read Mr Thickett’s letter with anything other than a sense of dismay (was there nothing EDDC got right?) or wonder (how come Mr Diviani and EDDC planning officers are still in a job?). From the outset Mr Thickett is (diplomatically) clear that the draft Local Plan is not just ‘unsound’: it’s appallingly deficient to the extent that substantial work is needed. Mr Thickett’s conclusion recognises that it’s going to be a long haul to get it right. More time for developers to propose hundreds more houses across the East Devon countryside, then.

Mr Thickett’s letter delivers some crushing blows. The opening sentence bluntly rejects EDDC’s argument that (just) 15,000 more houses are needed in East Devon. Critically, Mr Thickett finds that the Council’s Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) is fatally flawed in that it relies upon questionable data. He finds also that the target of 15,000 includes a need – Mr Thickett is too kind to describe it as guesswork – of 4,000 as overspill, an argument “which has no empirical evidential basis” (i.e. he hasn’t a clue how EDDC came up with this number). He could question the validity of some of the migration data used to inform the Council’s target, “but there seems little point given the shortcomings in the evidence base overall”. Ouch.

The vivisection continues. The 15,000 figure is not justified, the absence of an up to date SHMA is “a serious failing”, and the message is clear: EDDC should make allowances for more housing needed across the District. As developers argued at the Feniton Super Inquiry, EDDC should make up housing shortfalls in the shortest possible time and prove a five-year supply (“I look forward to hearing how you intend to ensure that this will be the case”). As for EDDC’s argument that a blanket 5% increase in housing for East Devon’s villages was appropriate … Mr Thickett states firmly that this is “too crude a tool”. (Feniton and other communities in East Devon should now be seriously worried.) Mr Thickett’s closing remark, that he will do all he can to help the Council go forward, is a generous and tactful way of saying that EDDC will have to start again, get its sums right this time, and get a move on. Or to put it another way, pull its finger out.

How did EDDC react? From a Council that wasted three years allowing Graham Brown to chair the East Devon Business Forum, to seeing an earlier version of the Local Plan thrown back last year with 53 flaws in it, it came as no surprise to see EDDC spinning furiously. Unsurprisingly the Council hailed the Thickett letter as a positive development, allowing it “more time to confirm housing volume” (http://www.eastdevon.gov.uk/communications_and_consultation.htm?newsid=1064. Presumably EDDC’s earlier statement that Mr Thickett’s letter had been embargoed at his own request, a request not present in his letter, was to allow time for the spin doctors to get to work.)

EDDC Leader Paul Diviani, with presumably a straight face, pronounced Mr Thickett’s letter as “pretty much what we expected”. Sadly for Mr Diviani, this is pretty well what a lot of us expected. Mr Thickett’s damning criticism of EDDC’s failure has condemned East Devon to a period of uncertainty, during which developers will seize upon the Planning Inspectorate’s savaging of the draft Local Plan as justification enough to build where they want: make no mistake, this is a black day for East Devon. Mr Diviani may be “relaxed about the extra work we have to do”, but the inevitable conclusion of those who have read Mr Thickett’s letter is that the only relaxing Mr Diviani should do henceforth is in a deckchair in retirement on a beach. Preferably one outside the District he has failed so miserably.

Anyone see the sentence in the Inspector’s letter that said: “Oh, and don’t publish this letter for three days after you receive it”?  No, us neither.

Perhaps it was in invisible ink … or perhaps it needed 3 days work to spin the “How we got it all wrong” into “East Devon is not an island”.