Senior planning officials will read all the comments on the planning application and talk to the developers, Human Nature. Eventually the planning officers will make a recommendation for Buckinghamshire councillors, but that could take some considerable time.
If the officers decide to recommend the development for approval by councillors they will also need to recommend the planning conditions that should be attached to the application.
And they cannot even begin to consider conditions until talks have been satisfactorily concluded between the developers and the highway authority, Thames Water and the flooding authority – three organisations with considerable concerns and with a legal responsibility to ensure any development meets strict criteria.
The water concerns in particular are complex and expensive. The developer could, at any time, decide the plan is not viable and simply walk away. If, however, everything is resolved, it’s probably going to be into next year before the plan is considered by councillors from Buckinghamshire Council.
But, but, but…
There are, however, wider issues now in play.
The decision to build houses in the Gomm Valley was conceived when Wycombe District Council existed and agreed in principle by councillors struggling to find space within the Wycombe boundary to build a certain number of houses as instructed by the Government.
Now, of course, the four district councils in the county have been abolished and replaced by one unitary local authority, Buckinghamshire Council. The new council is also under the same Government pressure to build a large number of new homes over the next 15 years or so but many believe it could, if it so desired, build those homes anywhere within the entire Bucks boundary, ignoring the old district boundaries.
At present the council says it is sticking to the housing allocation plans agreed by the former district councils. But a further complication reared its head during the Covid19 pandemic. Government planners have told Bucks to accommodate several thousand extra houses to those already planned to help out neighbouring Slough.
Slough also has to build tens of thousands of new homes in the next 15 years but it is quite literally full up within its boundary. The Government says those houses that can’t be fitted in need therefore to be built in neighbouring south Bucks… a demand that is being met with cold fury in Buckinghamshire.
There is already considerable opposition among the public and disquiet in council offices over the 28,000 additional homes planned for the Wycombe, Amersham and Beaconsfield areas over the next 15 years. Adding even more will send tempers to boiling point.
One possibility therefore, is to maybe take the opportunity suggested by some Gomm Valley protestors for a complete rethink of future housing plans. Instead of filling-in gaps here and gaps there and losing chunks of Green Belt some councillors want to follow Oxfordshire’s example, for instance, and build new towns rather than expand existing ones.
Others look at the vast open spaces in the north of Buckinghamshire. Looking even longer term, Government planners see the arc of land between Oxford and Cambridge as the next big development area in Britain. North Bucks falls right in the middle of that arc.
In the meantime the arguments rage over Gomm Valley. They will rage for some months yet.