This doesn’t look good, and is a big setback for those residents campaigning against the Wort’s Causeway development. Councillor Swanson is suggesting in the letter below (click to enlarge) that the council has decided that development on the sites concerned (“GB1 and GB2”) is unavoidable if the required new housing targets are to be met. She claims that “the new green belt line will be held”, but it’s hard to believe that if it can be moved once, it won’t be moved again, making the whole concept redundant. As the letter says, there will be an opportunity for residents to speak at a meeting on 29 May. In the meantime, please feel free to make any comments below.
(Thanks to Terry Parker for the information)
This is a recommendation to Councillors that the Worts Causeway site is accepted for building proposals; as you rightly say, the reason being given by Officers for this recommendation is that they state that the figure they have given to meet housing need cannot be met without the Worts site.
There are a number of committee stages in June – at each stage representations can be made by members of the public. Queen Edith’s Labour are in the process of producing a leaflet giving the full breakdown of the committee process:
22 May – Joint Strategic Transport and Spatial Planning Group
29 May- Development Plan Scrutiny sub committee
11 June- Environmental Scrutiny committee
27 June ? Full Council
The breakdown of the consultation response was as follows:
GB1: 289 responded – 248 objected, 25 supported
GB2: 281 responded – 238 objected, 26 supported
The final decision on the Local Plan will rest with Full Council in June. The Local Plan will not go before the County Council.
This recommendation is indeed extremely disappointing and it’s impossible to say that the Green Belt will be protected in future years as this was a central government initiative in the first instance and Westminster will make decisions in the future that affect building planning and potentially more inroads into the Green Belt.