Consultation on blueprint for planning
Views of city’s residents sought as council rejects 17,700 homes target
CONSULTATION on the draft local plan for Portsmouth will begin in the coming weeks, despite council leaders saying government housing targets were ‘neither feasible nor sensible’.
A six-week consultation on the planning blueprint, which outlines how the council plans to meet its 17,700-home target, was approved by the city council's cabinet on Tuesday.
But councillors also agreed to reiterate their concerns to that ‘completely unattainable’ requirement, saying Portsmouth was ‘a unique city which needed a unique solution’ to its housing demand.
The council is required to develop a local plan to outline its development plans and priorities for the next 15 years.
The draft version sets out six key strategic sites for development; Tipner, the city centre, Fratton Park and the Pompey Centre, Cosham, St James’s and Langstone Campus and Lakeside North Harbour. Included within this is the controversial £1bn Tipner West masterplan.
‘It is considered that, through long-term redevelopment, the city centre has the potential to become a diverse, vibrant and attractive area that has the capacity to deliver a number of new homes, new business, commercial and leisure space, new cultural, social and leisure, uses and new community facilities,’ the document says.
‘Together, this will make a major contribution to meeting the city's development needs and strengthen the identity and vitality of the city centre and its economy.’
But, despite approving public consultation on the draft local plan at Tuesday's cabinet meeting, councillors also agreed to a series of formal criticisms of the government's requirements.
Five amendments were put forward by council leader, councillor Gerald VernonJackson, who, last week, described the target as ‘a disaster waiting to happen and completely unattainable’.
They included a formal rejection of the government's 17,700-home goal, a claim it would cause ‘significant’ environmental damage and a call for local powers to set an alternative.
Introducing the draft plan on Tuesday, cabinet member for planning, councillor Hugh
Mason, said there were ‘a number of difficult bits in it’.
‘People will always be concerned about new developments and in this plan we have a large number of them,’ he said. ‘We are faced with challenges and we need to consider the implications of the options we have in front of us.’ And, responding to calls to increase affordable housing provision, he said the council had to be ‘realistic’ and accept that the cost of land in the city would make this unviable in many cases.
Cllr Vernon-Jackson said the council had reluctantly produced the draft local plan, and said building 17,700 new homes was ‘just not feasible, nor sensible’.
‘What that would do to people's lives and to the environment is very bad,’ he said. ‘If we are able to work together to reduce that figure, that would be great.
‘The whole of this plan is driven by the government's demand that we have to be able to identify land.
‘That means there has to be some very difficult decisions for us and that's why the government should reduce the target.
‘We are a unique city and we need a unique solution.’
The consultation approved by councillors on Tuesday will start ‘later this summer’ and run for six weeks with an aim for the final draft to be completed by next spring.