Replying to questions from Dr Roger F Smith (Horsham District Chair), the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) stated that “the South East Plan no longer forms part of the statutory development plan and local plans are no longer required to be in general conformity with it. While local planning authorities will no longer be bound by the Regional Strategy housing targets, the evidence base underpinning Regional Strategies , including housing numbers, can still be used by local councils if they so wish, but it is likely to be increasingly out of date”. Also, in a letter to Roger Smith Horsham MP Francis Maude advised that “that the abolition of the regional strategies also means the abolition of housing targets” and that “The Government’s planning reforms, set out primarily through the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) in 2012, gave the responsibility of setting housing targets to local authorities.”
This responsibility is clearly expressed by the NPPF at paragraph 158, which states that:
“Each local planning authority should ensure that the Local Plan is based on adequate, up-to-date and relevant evidence about the economic, social and environmental characteristics and prospects of the area. Local planning authorities should ensure that their assessment of and strategies for housing employment and other uses are integrated, and that they take full account of relevant market and economic signals”.
Roger Smith has written to each Horsham District Councillor drawing their attention to the NPPF paragraph 158 and the advice received from DCLG and Francis Maude MP, and asking them to ask the Government for additional time to produce a sound and appropriate plan after proper public consultation – for the compelling reasons explained below.
Horsham District is prey to developers.
Horsham District is prey to developers because the deadline of twelve months imposed by the Government, which has now expired, was far too short a time in which to prepare and consult on a complex plan that will determine the future of our District and its communities.
That communities in the District are vulnerable to development that is contrary to the wishes of communities has been confirmed by a recent Appeal Decision in which the Planning Inspectorate overruled Horsham District Council’s refusal of an application to build 46 houses on countryside east of Daux Avenue at Billingshurst. A decisive factor in this contentious decision was the District’s lack of a five-year housing land supply measured against the excessive target imposed by the recently revoked South East Plan. – on the questionable grounds that its “housing requirement figures are the most recent figures that have been tested through an examination process”.
In reality, the huge house-building target imposed on the District by the South East Plan was determined and tested through an examination process during a period of exceptional economic growth before the recession in the mistaken expectation that strong economic growth would continue and generate new jobs and a need for thousands of new houses to accommodate an expanding workforce. Instead we have a prolonged recession, which the architects of the South East Plan did not foresee, and which the Planning Inspectorate will neither allow for nor acknowledge when deciding Appeals.
Developers will not build more houses than can be sold and that is why the excessive target imposed on the District by the South East Plan has not been met; that is why there is a shortfall in houses built against the unachievable target set by the South East Plan, and that is why all communities in Horsham District will be vulnerable to inappropriate development until the Council has in place an up-to-date local plan. Until then developers will seek to exploit the lack of a local plan to build what they like where they like in expectation that the Planning Inspectorate will enable them to do so. By any equitable and sensible standard, this is unreasonable and unjust.
Communities now at risk include Billingshurst, where a planning application was recently rejected and another, for 550 houses, is the subject of an Appeal that will be decided by the Secretary of State, and Southwater where an application for a similar number of houses is now on hold, and Henfield, Mannings Heath and Storrington where applications to build on countryside are pending.
Dr Roger F Smith
Chairman Horsham District
28 April 2013