Well, that was a funny week. Just as Bob & I were preparing our thoughts for the big debate over the revised local plan, we received an email from the Chief Exec. to say that the extraordinary council meeting on 28th July had been cancelled!
Sadly this was not because he had finally seen the sense of the arguments supporting our earlier motion to delay the plan for 12 months, but because HMG had, the previous week, changed the National Planning Policy Framework to include a requirement, in para.22, that 'Where larger scale developments such as new settlements or significant extensions to existing villages and towns form part of the strategy for the area, policies should be set within a vision that looks further ahead (at least 30 years), to take into account the likely timescale for delivery.'
So we have moved from 'delaying the plan would probably be illegal' to 'we have to delay the plan to meet the new requirements'. How Sir Humphrey would have chuckled!
I am reminded of a memorable railway platform announcement heard whilst waiting for a London train at Shoreham-by-Sea station that went along the lines of 'Network Rail regrets to announce that due to a broken rail all up services are cancelled. click'. I suspect that HDC's Chief Exec. was slightly more measured in his response than I was on Shoreham station that morning, but in both cases there was no subsequent guidance on what to do next.
So, for the plan, this means consulting our learned (expensive) friends, and coming up with a vision fit for a planning inspector: whatever that is - timescale t.b.d.!
