Countryside campaigners’ concerns over new planning laws
By CHRIS HILL, Rural affairs correspondent
Monday, March 18, 2013
10:30 AM
A house-building scheme south of Norwich has been highlighted by national countryside campaigners as an example of how planning reforms are failing to prevent unwanted developments.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has published a report today which examines the first 12 months since the publication of the government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).
The study says the concerns of local communities – and the spirit of the localism agenda – are being overruled by the pro-growth document which creates a “presumption in favour of sustainable development”.
Among the CPRE’s national cases studies is the decision made in December by South Norfolk Council to grant planning permission for 180 houses on the edge of Mulbarton, prior to the completion of the village neighbourhood plan.
CPRE chief executive Shaun Spiers said: “Despite the rhetoric of localism, it now seems that local communities are increasingly powerless to prevent damaging development even in the most sensitive locations.
“The country badly needs more housing, including affordable housing in rural areas. But we will not get housing on the scale we need without popular consent, and there will be no popular consent unless local communities believe that they are being listened to and that the planning system is minimising the loss of much-loved green fields.”
The Mulbarton plans were approved by South Norfolk’s development management committee on December 5 despite the objections of 149 residents.
The parish council objected to the proposal because it did not believe the site was the best one in the village for new development, and it wanted to develop a neighbourhood plan to promote development on a more locally acceptable site.
Following the decision, parish council chairman Peter Leigh said: “What is the sense in having democracy, development boundaries and due process when it is completely swamped?”
Tim Horspole, South Norfolk’s director of growth and localism, said Mulbarton Parish Council’s views were taken into account, but the key factor in the decision was the lack of a five-year housing land supply in the district.
“This meant the council had to follow the NPPF, which requires local planning authorities to exercise a presumption in favour of sustainable development where a five-year housing land supply cannot be demonstrated,” he said. “Having considered the attributes of the site, and the NPPF, the committee concluded that the council could not sustain a refusal of planning permission at appeal and granted planning permission.”
For the full CPRE report, named Countryside Promises: Planning Realities, see http://bit.ly/XzAEeo.
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4 comments
I think what the Lib Dems did at national level was unforgiveable. But dont dwell on that when it comes to local politics. The best Councillors in South Norfolk by a country mile are the Lib Dems. They make the pliant obedient nobodies who pass as Tories look like a gaggle of exceptionally dim ducks. Get rid of the Tories and you get rid of incinerators, huge swathes of boxy houses and all the other evils that the leaders of the Tory Councils with their obedient ducks who will vote as they are told are wishing on you. Check the voting record of your County Council. If they have voted for every single bit of rubbish they have been told to then dont vote for them otherwise you will be to blame as much as them.
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Electra
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
They are also concerned of not getting their say on story's to do with the incinerator, managing consent of the public seems to be the speciality of the EDP. At least in future they will have to get their facts right. SNDC should have waited until the neighbourhood plan was available, planning over people's head means not listening.
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ingo wagenknecht
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
@Mr Cameron Isaliar: "... people who voted for the ConDems" - Please, have a thought for Liberal voters! I feel sure that few or any of them will have realised quite the extent to which their votes would have helped power what's effectively a minority Tory government. In fact, I don't see how they could really have predicted it - the 2010 General Election result could have played out in many other ways than this. I'm not a Lib Dem member or voter myself, but I know several and I feel their pain.
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gilded beams
Monday, March 18, 2013
Boo hoo, isn't that what all you people who voted for the ConDems expected? Under the guise of "kick-starting the economy" of course the Cameleon and Piggles are only too keen to allow a developers' free-for-all. Especially when so many of the big boys in this particular group of vested interests have given so generously to the Tory party. LOL
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Mr Cameron Isaliar
Monday, March 18, 2013