Local Democracy (Debate)

Sat 6 Jan, 13:13 (last edited on Sat 6 Jan, 14:03)

This is by way of an addendum to my last post, for the benefit of the dozen or so who’ve read it!  Just that otherwise I’d be writing a book…

First, to acknowledge that it is much easier to object to housing proposals on what might loosely be termed environmental and/or aesthetic grounds when you're at least some way along the housing ladder than for those struggling to find a home they can afford, especially for those with long connections to a particular area.  It’s of no consolation to them to say that Charlbury is hardly alone in this respect nor that objections on those grounds are not necessarily selfish or ill-founded.   But personalising the discussion solves nothing.

RB to one side for the minute, affordability in areas like ours has long been recognised as a major problem.  And you don’t need a degree in planning – or at all – to recognise that building large detached houses does very little to meet locally generated needs but attracts people from outside the area (that’s not to criticise those who buy them, who wouldn’t want to live here??).  You might think that a statement of the b******g obvious.  It was confirmed by a report commissioned by WODC at the Inspector’s request during the Local Plan Examination - the Brett Associates Report (which didn’t really answer the questions the Inspector had asked but that’s another story!).

So when it came to the Neighbourhood Plan, we invited landowners to put forward sites for possible allocation for development – and were surprised that no serious requests were made.  A colleague and I did a thorough walk around at the time.  At least in principle – you have to look at site-specific aspects too -  there is probably still some land that would meet the Local & Neighbourhood Plan criteria but hasn’t been put forward. Yet.

What we also tried to do was to adopt criteria to insist that any new housing should meet those locally generated needs.  I’ve already alluded to those criteria being at least watered down in the final version.  Sadly also, although there hasn’t been a lot of development since then, WODC imho have to take some responsibility here for being far too ready in the recent past to allow sometimes piecemeal development of larger houses rather than housing of the size and type we as a community undoubtedly need.

Of course there are several other issues that affect land & housing availability, not least land values.  If a site in say, agricultural use is allocated for development in a Local Plan – need I say more?  And if that allocation is declined – same question! 

So where does that leave us with RB?  I hope this at least puts the discussion into some kind of context.  As a final comment, I don’t envy the Planning Committee having to make the decision – but they could always leave it to an impartial and independent Inspector!