The District Council is running into further problems with the core strategy for future housing and development.
Broadly speaking:
Under the Labour Government, the District Council had to find sites for someone to build 250 new homes per year.
We felt some of the sites were poorly-chosen, but lost the votes on this.
The new government said that councils could now set their own targets. So the District Council came up with a new rate of 190 new homes per year. But they increased the number of years in the plan so the sites people didn’t like were still included.
It now seems that the old figure still applies until the government’s Localism Bill becomes law in December.
The District Council wanted to sidestep this by asking the Government Inspector to suspend her examination of the plan until December.
Cllr Mason very accurately predicted this outcome and this makes you wonder why RDC even considered the option – to give themselves a get-out route (i.e. “Labour did it”)?
Emerging government policies also strongly suggest we will need to find space for many more houses on top of the 3,400 we now look certain to get. Where are these going to go?
So we have a short-sighted, economically ineffective, Core Strategy with no obvious scope for further development and no meaningful infrastructure improvements. Encouraging?
The council’s EGM will be on 31 August but the inspector has asked for a response “asap and in any event by 26 August”. So another debate AFTER the dcision has been made?
The Inspector’s response reveals that Basildon Council objected to RDC’s proposal to reduce new homes from 250 to 190 pa. The proposed new regulations will require Rochford and Basildon to “cooperate”. Will this mean extra housing on the shared border?
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Cllr Mason very accurately predicted this outcome and this makes you wonder why RDC even considered the option – to give themselves a get-out route (i.e. “Labour did it”)?
Emerging government policies also strongly suggest we will need to find space for many more houses on top of the 3,400 we now look certain to get. Where are these going to go?
So we have a short-sighted, economically ineffective, Core Strategy with no obvious scope for further development and no meaningful infrastructure improvements. Encouraging?
The council’s EGM will be on 31 August but the inspector has asked for a response “asap and in any event by 26 August”. So another debate AFTER the dcision has been made?
The Council’s initial response will be basically ‘We are having an extraordinary council meeting on August 31st, we’ll get back to you after that’.
The Inspector’s response reveals that Basildon Council objected to RDC’s proposal to reduce new homes from 250 to 190 pa. The proposed new regulations will require Rochford and Basildon to “cooperate”. Will this mean extra housing on the shared border?