Posted by

Posted on

8 Sep 2014

Posted under

Affordable and Social Housing, Environment (local), Local Plan, NPPF

Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and the 5-year land supply fiasco

…..“We believe our first target should be to mobilise public opinion to persuade the government to allow sites with planning permission to be included unconditionally in the estimate of the five year housing land supply.

Currently, if at any stage it can be shown that a residential site with planning permission has not been, or could not be, developed within the five year time limit, the site will immediately be removed from the estimate of the five year housing land supply. Local authorities are finding that, as they continue to grant planning permissions which then are stalled, their supply of housing land gets ever smaller. This contributes to their eventually falling victim to the five year housing land supply rule, thereby losing the ability to prevent housing development on sites which under the Local Plan were never intended for housing development.

The real problem is the five year housing land supply rule, but, as a first step, let us get a fairer way of estimating the housing land supply itself, viz. have sites with planning permission qualify for unconditional inclusion in the estimate of the housing land supply. That is politically achievable in the short term – it would require merely a change to Note 11 which qualifies par. 47 of the NPPF in which the rule is specified. So please, everyone start campaigning for that!

http://www.cprelancashire.org.uk/campaigns/housing-and-planning/housing/the-issues/item/2144-five-year-housing-land-supply

Posted by

transparencyforeastdevon

Posted on

7 Sep 2014

Posted under

Affordable and Social Housing, EDDC, Local Plan

Comments

1 Comment

On message or not?

The Western Morning News has recently carried the story that Westcountry cities of Exeter and Taunton were among 40 identified for massive expansion by David Rudlin, an urban designer who scooped the Wolfson prize, the second-biggest economics prize after the Nobel.

His award-winning proposals, which earned him £250,000, included circular developments, with parks and allotments, of up to 150,000 people per town.

Mr Rudlin argued models pioneered in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Germany should be adopted by Britain which could “take a confident bite out of the greenbelt”.

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Garden-City-plan-double-size-Exeter-Taunton/story-22883683-detail/story.html

But here is Housing Minister Brandon Lewis’ response to Wolfson Prize:

“We are committed to protecting the green belt from development as an important protection against urban sprawl – today’s proposal from Lord Wolfson’s competition is not government policy and will not be taken up.

Instead, we stand ready to work with communities across the country who have ideas for a new generation of garden cities and we have offered support to areas with locally-supported plans that come forward. But we do not intend to follow the failed example of top-down eco-towns from the last administration. Picking housing numbers out of thin air and imposing them on local communities builds nothing but resentment. This government has abolished regional quangos’ role in planning – instead, we have empowered elected local councils to determine where new homes should and shouldn’t go.”

Picking housing numbers out of thin air and imposing them on local communities builds nothing but resentment. Hmmm!

Are our local Conservatives “on message” with their Conservative Minister?

Posted by

transparencyforeastdevon

Posted on

26 Aug 2014

Posted under

Affordable and Social Housing, Democracy, EDBF, EDDC, Environment (local), Feniton/ Talaton, NPPF, Seaton/ Colyford / Colyton, Sidmouth/ Sidford/ Sidbury

Comments

5 Comments

EDA Chairman 1 – Leader of East Devon District Council own goal – and a STUNNING revelation!!!!

This morning the Chairman of East Devon Alliance, Paul Arnott, once again went head-to-head with a top EDDC councillor – this time EDDC Council Leader Paul Diviani on the lack of a Local Plan. The EDA Chairman said that he was not surprised but still disappointed that, having been dealing with this project since 2007, EDDC still is not in a position to put a (third) draft Local Plan forward to the Planning Inspectorate and leaving the district vulnerable to speculative development. And he comes up with a STUNNING REVELATION why he thinks current research for the Local Plan is wrong and the reason why it is being held up. Read on …

Councillor Diviani trod the well-worn track of saying that there really is nothing to worry about – EDDC has so far won more than 70% of its appeals and (occasionally) says no to developers. The EDA Chairman noted that it is NOT EDDC alone that champions these appeals – particularly in the case of Feniton and Seaton, where it was local people who raised funds and made their case to inspectors, so implying that EDDC alone does this is somewhat disingenuous.

However, then came the total shock. You may recall that two sets of consultants employed by EDDC before the last iteration of the Local Plan said that they thought that around 12,000 homes should be built in the district. EDDC (and, it has to be said members of the East Devon Business Forum and developers, sometimes the same thing) said, no, no – this could not be right and at least 15,000 homes were needed – which is what got put in the draft put before the Inspector.

The Inspector threw out the plan, specifically saying that he could see no back-up research that confirmed the 15,000 number that EDDC came up with.

And what does Leader Diviani say to this – if we take his interview at face value believing that he is being topical we could read it as THREE sets of consultants coming to around the same figure but we must assume he is talking about the two reports? He says, no no – they CANNOT be right. The government wants us to build more houses, we NEED more houses so we are going to “look at the figures again” because they must be “realistic”.

HOW MORE REALISTIC CAN YOU GET THAT TWO DIFFERENT SETS OF CONSULTANTS COMING TO THE SAME CONCLUSION THAT WE NEED 11,000 – 12,000 NEW HOMES AND NOT 15,000?

So, here we have it – Councillor Diviani thinks he is more expert than consultants and will not give up until – presumably – another set of consultants comes up with the figure that he and the government want. A figure not based on evidence. As usual – fire the arrow, then draw the bulls-eye around it.

So, we ask ourselves: where did the figure of 15,000 that Councillor Diviani so desperately wants come from? Developers? Out of thin air? from the Government which has told us (via the NPPF) to come up with LOCAL figures backed up with LOCAL evidence?

Some very, very, trenchant questions need to be asked. Not least by our councillors and, particularly, by Councillor Diviani

Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p024pn5v

(THE INTERVIEW IS 2 HOURS 6 MIN AT 8.38 AM)

Posted by

transparencyforeastdevon

Posted on

21 Aug 2014

Posted under

Affordable and Social Housing, DCC, Duty to co-operate, EDDC, Environment (local), Local Plan, Neighbourhood Plans, NPPF

Comments

5 Comments

The delayed Local Plan – the missing document tracked down and a commentary on it (“What the Dickins”)

An EDA correspondent has tracked down the elusive “attachment” to the agenda of the Development Management Committee regarding the delay to the Local Plan (see post below)

DM260814-Emerging Housing Numbers

and a critique of this document is given below by the same correspondent:

What the Dickins?

A paper by Matt Dickins, EDDC’s Planning Policy Manager, to be presented to Development Mgmt Committee on 26 August (see link above) makes for depressing reading. Residents of East Devon hoping that EDDC will finally be getting its act together on housing land provision will be deeply disappointed.

As many will know, EDDC is obliged to prove that it has an objective evaluation of housing land provision. The absence of such an evaluation, and EDDC’s failure to prove both a five-year land supply and have a Local Plan in place, means that it remains open season for developers. An objective evaluation of housing land need is achieved through the production of a Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA). In his scathing review of EDDC’s draft Local Plan earlier this year Planning Inspector Anthony Thickett called the absence of an up to date SHMA a “serious failing” on the part of the Council. (He also found that EDDC’s argument for 4,000 ‘overspill’ migration numbers, mostly from Exeter, had “no empirical basis”.)

Does Mr Dickins come bearing good news for EDDC and the people of East Devon that the day of the SHMA is at hand? Not at all. His paper comprises six pages of complacent waffle. Notwithstanding that some research should have already been done, “unfortunately there have been delays”. There may need to be discussions with adjacent authorities. (We know that, Mr Dickins. Exeter CC is looking to appropriate East Devon countryside.) While Mr Dickins’ paper points out that demographically East Devon is likely to see a major increase in population from the over 65s – surely implying a need for more sheltered accommodation in towns with services than new build on greenfield sites – his paper concludes lamely that “at this stage it is not possible to provide a timetable for completion of the full SHMA work”! The consequence? “We can only conclude that we do not have a 5 year housing land supply and continue to consider application [sic] accordingly”.

To translate: EDDC has no idea when the SHMA will be finished, it won’t even venture a guess, and in the meantime the lack of a five-year housing land supply [and Local Plan] means that developers will consider to maintain the upper hand in a district where two-thirds of the land is AONB. This is a woeful paper: DMC should send Mr Dickins to the Naughty Step and require him to try again. Time someone got a grip while there is any countryside left in East Devon.

Posted by

transparencyforeastdevon

Posted on

21 Aug 2014

Posted under

Affordable and Social Housing, DCC, Duty to co-operate, EDDC, Environment (local), Local Plan, Misc, Neighbourhood Plans, NPPF

Comments

2 Comments

Local Plan delayed again – unlikely to be approved for many months

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.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

HOW MORE REALISTIC CAN YOU GET THAT TWO DIFFERENT SETS OF CONSULTANTS COMING TO THE SAME CONCLUSION THAT WE NEED 11,000 – 12,000 NEW HOMES AND NOT 15,000?

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: