At the full council meeting on 19 September, councillors will be asked to approve the new local development plan, on which successive Conservative and Lib Dem administrations have worked over many years. If they vote in favour, it can go on to the next stages of the process, leading to formal adoption at a government inspector’s enquiry.
If councillors vote, as the Conservatives are threatening to do, to remove a site from the current draft local plan on 19 September, disaster could easily ensue.
We could expect to face a robust challenge at the inspector’s enquiry from the site’s landowners and developers. The inspector may well side with them; the council itself (then, ironically, under Conservative leadership) identified the site as suitable for development and worked with the owners and developers to bring it forward. The council would have great difficulties defending a complete reversal of its position. The inspector would take a dim view of any change that appeared as politically inspired rather than based on sound planning grounds.
And, of course, if a site were to be withdrawn, another of comparable size would have to be identified to put in its place (the Conservatives have suggested none so far). Given the government’s desire for more new homes, we could easily end up with both the withdrawn site and its replacement getting the green light from the inspector. After all, the council would have said that both were suitable for development.
Nor should we forget that a major new site introduced on 19 September would require a further extensive public consultation, which with the other new extensive work required, would delay completion of the plan for at least a year, probably much more. By that time, our current local plan might well have expired, leaving us with no defence against speculative applications that we want to refuse.
The new government’s proposed planning reforms give added urgency to getting our local plan approved without further delay on 19 September. The government’s published transitional arrangements, and associated parliamentary statements, suggest that if our new plan is at the inspector’s enquiry by January, we can proceed on the existing numbers rather than the new higher numbers proposed by the government.
True, if we succeed, we will have to begin preparing another local plan almost immediately, which identifies sites to accommodate the government’s higher numbers. But we will have the time to do it in a considered way and – crucially – with our new local plan in place to protect us from speculative development and planning by appeal across the whole borough.
For these reasons, I urge opposition councillors to put aside thoughts of narrow party advantage and act in the best interests of the borough when they consider the local plan on 19 September.
Failure to do so risks plunging us into a chaotic planning free-for-all that no one – I hope – wants to see.
Stephen Conway is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council
