During the public meetings recently, we were given the message – “the Government are making us do this, we’ve got to meet the numbers, so we have to use Green Belt.”
We accept that the Council has little influence over the size of the Objectively Assessed Need (OAN), and the Council wouldn’t dispute our assertion that the OAN is double the 10,000 figure that local people need – there are currently few rules about how the OAN figures are arrived at, but they must factor in migration from outside.
Where we differ is the assertion that we have to meet these numbers – we don’t.
Most local authorities are obliged to meet theirs, but south Essex Councils are lucky enough to lie within London’s Green Belt and can limit their level of development by using Green Belt as a constraint.
Our OAN is 19,500 and we can build around 9,000 houses without using Green Belt, so that’s the minimum number we can choose to build.
We accept that the Council has little influence over the size of the Objectively Assessed Need (OAN), and the Council wouldn’t dispute our assertion that the OAN is double the 10,000 figure that local people need – there are currently few rules about how the OAN figures are arrived at, but they must factor in migration from outside.
Where we differ is the assertion that we have to meet these numbers – we don’t.
Most local authorities are obliged to meet theirs, but south Essex Councils are lucky enough to lie within London’s Green Belt and can limit their level of development by using Green Belt as a constraint.
Our OAN is 19,500 and we can build around 9,000 houses without using Green Belt, so that’s the minimum number we can choose to build.
National Planning Policy, Planning Guidance, government ministers, central government civil servants and even our own MP John Baron have confirmed that Green Belt doesn’t have to be used.
It would be wrong of us not to concede that there is a messy grey area between theory and practice, with Planning Officers in many authorities up and down the country, advising that theory and practice are different – this is an absurdly difficult situation for local decision makers.
Against that challenge it’s very encouraging that the London Borough of Redbridge recently had a Plan approved by a Planning Inspector, one which used Green Belt protection as a reason not to meet full OAN. Havering looks set to follow suit.
Road to Damascus?
In 2016 the OAN was 15,260, and the Conservatives proposed a draft Plan that would meet this in full. This included 8,500 on Green Belt, 1,720 of which were here. All the estates in the current Plan were in that version as well as the counter-productive Relief Road.
The Plan mentioned a rejected strategic option of protecting all Green Belt. It was rejected in one sentence on the debateable grounds of “social and economic consequences of failing to meet the objectively assessed need…by protecting the Green Belt” rather than because it couldn’t be done.
There was a huge public outcry and 1,700 Billericay residents responded to that consultation, the overwhelming majority opposing the Plan.
We didn’t find out how the Conservatives would respond, as in 2017, the opposition decided that they had enough common ground to form an anti-Conservation coalition, this coalition had enough members to take power. The last act of the Conservative group was to get the ball rolling on a process to commission external advice on the best way to navigate the grey areas described and produce a plan with a Housing Target lower than the OAN.
UKIP and the Independents had campaigned on a Green Belt platform and now the Conservatives seemed to share this view. A large majority of Councillors appeared to favour using Green Belt as a constraint to meeting OAN.
Coalition in control
By this time OAN had risen to 19,500 but Linda Allport-Hodge’s UKIP group didn’t want to meet it, they favoured a Housing Target of 10,000 as this approximated to the number of homes local people needed over 20 years (about half the OAN). They adopted policies that would see brownfield land deliver more houses than under the previous Plan so if they stayed on track they would only build around 1,000 homes on Green Belt spread around the borough.
But it didn’t work out – the idea to commission external advice on how to use Green Belt as a constraint was dropped and our own Planning Officers took over the task of advising on that. Observing closely, albeit from the outside, it appeared to us that the Planning Team could have been more helpful – their report was highly discouraging and their interpretations dubious.
As well as a lack of support from officers, there was added a further issue – time.
From the moment the coalition took control, all parties knew that the May 2018 elections would change everything, the threat of intervention by the Secretary of State added further pressure.
The coalition wanted to produce a Plan on their terms so, discouraged by officers and under time pressure, they reverted from what was a promising Plan A to an appalling Plan B, one that met Objectively Assessed Needs while protecting areas that were the priorities of UKIP and Labour; and Billericay is not a priority - not in a good way anyway.
Cruel irony
The Coalition timetable was to get a Local Plan adopted at Full Council on 22nd March, the last possible day it could be approved before the election. Such was their haste in the horse-trading around dropping and shifting housing allocations, that the Plan that they eventually approved actually fell 1,500 short of the full OAN.
After giving up on a Plan that protected nearly all the Green Belt we’re left with a Plan which uses vast amounts and, by the tweeted admission of the Linda Allport Hodge herself, would “ruin the Basildon borough, not just Billericay”.
A plan which by going slightly under OAN, with no other Council taking the unmet ‘Need’, ironically reinforces the point that a much lower and more sustainable housing target could have been chosen.
With no need to build on Green Belt, the Council meeting bunfights about the distribution of unwanted development become, at a stroke, irrelevant.
UKIP-Labour are committed to their Plan; the Regulation 19 consultation is our best opportunity to fight back. Local opinion is meant to be a factor when considering taking land out of Green Belt and Billericay’s avalanche of responses that will leave the Inspector in no doubt whatsoever.
It would be wrong of us not to concede that there is a messy grey area between theory and practice, with Planning Officers in many authorities up and down the country, advising that theory and practice are different – this is an absurdly difficult situation for local decision makers.
Against that challenge it’s very encouraging that the London Borough of Redbridge recently had a Plan approved by a Planning Inspector, one which used Green Belt protection as a reason not to meet full OAN. Havering looks set to follow suit.
Road to Damascus?
In 2016 the OAN was 15,260, and the Conservatives proposed a draft Plan that would meet this in full. This included 8,500 on Green Belt, 1,720 of which were here. All the estates in the current Plan were in that version as well as the counter-productive Relief Road.
The Plan mentioned a rejected strategic option of protecting all Green Belt. It was rejected in one sentence on the debateable grounds of “social and economic consequences of failing to meet the objectively assessed need…by protecting the Green Belt” rather than because it couldn’t be done.
There was a huge public outcry and 1,700 Billericay residents responded to that consultation, the overwhelming majority opposing the Plan.
We didn’t find out how the Conservatives would respond, as in 2017, the opposition decided that they had enough common ground to form an anti-Conservation coalition, this coalition had enough members to take power. The last act of the Conservative group was to get the ball rolling on a process to commission external advice on the best way to navigate the grey areas described and produce a plan with a Housing Target lower than the OAN.
UKIP and the Independents had campaigned on a Green Belt platform and now the Conservatives seemed to share this view. A large majority of Councillors appeared to favour using Green Belt as a constraint to meeting OAN.
Coalition in control
By this time OAN had risen to 19,500 but Linda Allport-Hodge’s UKIP group didn’t want to meet it, they favoured a Housing Target of 10,000 as this approximated to the number of homes local people needed over 20 years (about half the OAN). They adopted policies that would see brownfield land deliver more houses than under the previous Plan so if they stayed on track they would only build around 1,000 homes on Green Belt spread around the borough.
But it didn’t work out – the idea to commission external advice on how to use Green Belt as a constraint was dropped and our own Planning Officers took over the task of advising on that. Observing closely, albeit from the outside, it appeared to us that the Planning Team could have been more helpful – their report was highly discouraging and their interpretations dubious.
As well as a lack of support from officers, there was added a further issue – time.
From the moment the coalition took control, all parties knew that the May 2018 elections would change everything, the threat of intervention by the Secretary of State added further pressure.
The coalition wanted to produce a Plan on their terms so, discouraged by officers and under time pressure, they reverted from what was a promising Plan A to an appalling Plan B, one that met Objectively Assessed Needs while protecting areas that were the priorities of UKIP and Labour; and Billericay is not a priority - not in a good way anyway.
Cruel irony
The Coalition timetable was to get a Local Plan adopted at Full Council on 22nd March, the last possible day it could be approved before the election. Such was their haste in the horse-trading around dropping and shifting housing allocations, that the Plan that they eventually approved actually fell 1,500 short of the full OAN.
After giving up on a Plan that protected nearly all the Green Belt we’re left with a Plan which uses vast amounts and, by the tweeted admission of the Linda Allport Hodge herself, would “ruin the Basildon borough, not just Billericay”.
A plan which by going slightly under OAN, with no other Council taking the unmet ‘Need’, ironically reinforces the point that a much lower and more sustainable housing target could have been chosen.
With no need to build on Green Belt, the Council meeting bunfights about the distribution of unwanted development become, at a stroke, irrelevant.
UKIP-Labour are committed to their Plan; the Regulation 19 consultation is our best opportunity to fight back. Local opinion is meant to be a factor when considering taking land out of Green Belt and Billericay’s avalanche of responses that will leave the Inspector in no doubt whatsoever.
