 Like many people, I welcome development in our Borough, and well understand the need for housing. As a member of the planning committee, I would like however to share with you my frustration with the process, and how it might be changed by a more enlightened Government for the better.
The Town and County Planning Act 1990 makes clear that the central decision-making body for planning applications is the local planning authority, in our case, Woking Borough Council. As with many decisions of a public nature, there is an appeal process. This allows applicants who have been refused planning permission to apply to the Planning Inspectorate. It is important to note that whilst the planning inspector is a planner by profession, s/he is unelected and based in Bristol with little local knowledge. It is an affront to the principle of subsidiarity (whereby decisions should be taken close to the individual citizen) and undemocratic. With this regulatory background we can begin to see the unseen hand of central government, in all our decisions.
Councils are obliged to create a document (currently known as the Local Plan soon changing to the Local Development Framework) that sets out areas for residential, industry, commerce, and other future development in this regard. This collection of documents is the authoritative article against which all planning applications are assessed, and is developed in consultation with local people. 'Quite right' I hear you collectively cry...and why not, it sounds a democratic Utopia; local people working with their councillors making decisions that collectively affect their community. That is the fiction, here is the reality.
Councils like Woking up and down the South of England have undergone a similar process, carefully devising methods of consultation, and using invaluable local knowledge and experience to plan out their future community, and submitted it to the Department of Communities for approval. Without exception, the allocations for housing have been vastly increased by Government, not merely as targets, but as minimum standards of delivery with penalties for non-compliance. Woking is obliged to deliver in the region of 250 new properties a year. Whilst a severe challenge, this in itself is just about manageable. When you combine this with Government slashed budgets for Highways, Education, Policing, and Social Services coupled with a declining expansion of water resources, you create an infrastructure collapse. This is my fundamental objection to imposed housing targets, not only are they non-sustainable, they also create real problems for the first-time buyers for which the swelling housing targets are supposed to help.
Any future reform of this system will of course have to take account of the need for housing and affordable accommodation. It should however, show due regard to a diversity of housing, (not merely one and two bedroom flats), and should be inline with infrastructure investment. Crucially, the voice of citizens and their elected representatives should be central to planning applications. I am cautious of an Environmental Court (as is the case in France and Australia); where objectors to planning applications may appeal to the court against a decision to grant planning permission, as perhaps another layer of bureaucracy in an ever-increasing State. We must however, seek a resolution to development control that places residents at the centre of the consultation process that is transparent, and is more accountable than it is today.
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Councillor Ashley Bowes
Pyrford
T: 01483 768 257
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