A CONTROVERSIAL local plan which would have seen up to 16,000 new homes being built in the Amersham and Beaconsfield area – including Penn – over the next 16 years is set to be scrapped next week.
Buckinghamshire councillors are being asked to take a huge gamble by ditching the Chiltern and South Bucks Local Plan.
Local plans lay down where houses can and cannot be built but they are supposed to be reviewed and agreed every five years or so to prevent housing developers submitting plans for building in areas the councils don’t want. Without an up to date local plan developers who have had plans turned down often win on appeal.
However, the council think the gamble is worth taking – even though any new local plan is unlikely to be in place for another five years – because things have changed so much in recent months. For starters the former councils that prepared local plans have disappeared and the new unitary Buckinghamshire Council has to devise a local plan for the whole of the county, not just separate parts.
In addition, the Government’s recently published White Paper aimed at loosening planning laws indicates that Green Belt and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) will be more strongly protected than before – 87 per cent of the Chiltern and South Bucks area is in Green Belt and 43 per cent in the Chilterns AONB.
Spanner in the works
The former district councils had struggled to accommodate the former Government’s target of 16,000 new homes in the Beaconsfield and Amersham area over the next 16 years.
Amid enormous local opposition they proposed removing a dozen local villages, including Winchmore Hill and Little Kingshill, from Green Belt protection altogether and withdrawing a further 13 sites from the Green Belt. In Penn the Green Belt would have remained but with more “infilling” allowed.
The issue was due to be thrashed out at a public inquiry starting in the Spring, but the coronavirus pandemic meant that was postponed indefinitely.
Then, in May, Government planners threw a further spanner in the works by declaring that the local council had failed to co-operate properly with neighbouring Slough over its housing plans. They said South Bucks should accommodate an additional 10,000 houses that can’t be fitted into the Slough area.
So now Buckinghamshire Council bosses think it’s best to start again and take the risk of housing developers putting in speculative planning applications wherever they fancy in the hope the Government will support them in any planning appeal.
A meeting of Buckinghamshire Council is expected to give the go-ahead to ditching the local plan next Wednesday.
Planning chief Cllr Warren Whyte said: ”We believe the time is right to refocus our efforts and resources on completing a new local plan for the whole of Buckinghamshire.”
He acknowledged the move will put pressure on housing land supply in the short term but felt existing laws protecting Green Belt and AONB should mitigate that pressure. Housing developers and those experiencing difficulty in finding somewhere to live in the area may beg to differ.
UPDATE: The council agreed to scrap the local plan at its meeting on 21 October.