Friday's planning meeting – some thoughts

Despite the timing – 2.00 to 3.00pm on Friday afternoon – which may prevent many getting there because of work commitments and picking up children from school, MP Stephen O'Brien and Cheshire East Councillor Rachel Bailey are likely to attract some testing questions at their Planning public meeting in the Public Hall.

As regular readers will be well aware, there are strong feelings amongst many about how planning policies have resulted in communities all over England being inundated with planning applications for housing estates by speculative developers and builders.

Applications

Audlem has two current applications totalling up to 156 dwellings and rumours of at least one more to come. Both the Mill Lane and Little Heath applications were turned down by Cheshire East's Strategic Planning Board on 9th October, albeit the latter after Gladman Developments had already gone to appeal to the Secretary of State because the council had failed to deal with it within the allowed thirteen weeks.

The problems seem to revolve around two key issues. First, the Government's National Planning Policy Framework, which has been seen as giving a presumption in favour of development, albeit 'sustainable development', and secondly the failure of Cheshire East to produce an agreed and acceptable Local Plan in the four and half years since the authority came into existence on 1st April 2009.

Not accepted

Even worse, acceptance of the draft Local Plan which it was hoped would close the planning loophole developers are exploiting, has not happened as planning inspectors have refused to accept the council's 5-year building target of 7,500 homes and said 9,000 homes should be built.

Which raises the question, what happened to the much-promised localism, which had its own parliamentary Localism Act, if the Planning Inspectorate or the Secretary of State simply overrule plans put together by so-called professional local planners over many years – indeed many would say, far too many years.

Beggars belief

Some say it almost beggars belief that any organisation can take four and half years, indeed five and half if you add on the additional year of parallel working that came before April 2009, to produce an acceptable forecast of housing needs over the next five years. How long do Cheshire East's planners need because it is this failure to deliver a timely plan that has landed communities like Audlem with such huge proposals for additional housing.

Whatever the merits of those applications – and it has to be said that some residents and businesses welcome such growth in the village – the principle that decisions are taken properly by elected councils and not by speculative developers must surely not be overridden by planning inspectors simply refusing to accept Local Plans, albeit draft plans, as has been the case in Cheshire East in three recent planning appeals.

Nick Boles

Others are asking what is the role of the Planning Minister, Nick Boles, in all this. Newspapers have included reports such as: "Nicholas Boles, the ruthless, fiercely ambitious Tory under-secretary in charge of planning, aspires to concrete an expanse of rural England twice the size of Greater London.

"He considers himself to be fighting a crusade against selfish Nimbys, saying: "We cannot turn a blind eye while Margaret Thatcher's dream of a property-owning democracy shrivels, and shrug our shoulders as home-ownership reverts to what it was in the 19th century -- a privilege, the exclusive preserve of people with large incomes or wealthy parents."

Pressure

The Minister, we were told in Sundays' BBC1 Weekly Politics programme which featured Audlem, came under fierce pressure last week from MPs across the country now seeing the backlash from the planning chaos that has resulted from national policies and the failure of councils to deliver Local Plans and acceptable 5-Year housing supply targets.

But those MPs have been well aware of the problem for many many months. Surely the sheer numbers of constituencies affected should have seen more effective pressure on Secretary of State Eric Pickles and Nick Boles before now when many planning applications have already been approved or are on course to being given the green light at appeal.

Lively

Friday's meeting promises to be a lively affair. But will it make any difference to the developers' plans to increase Audlem's population by 20% in a short time when the draft Local Plan says it should expand by seventy homes over twenty years. We shall see.

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