Claims that town is being treated unfairly
COUNCILLORS claim residents in the Ilkeston area are being unfairly treated over housing, with more sites in the area being earmarked for properties than around affluent Erewash villages.
On Thursday, Erewash Borough Council debated potential plans to allocate land for future housing need.
Several councillors highlighted how much of these sites, and past approved housing developments, were focused around Ilkeston as opposed to villages elsewhere in the borough.
Cllr Frank Phillips claimed there were two types of green belt – protected land – one which was “sacrificial”, around Ilkeston, and another which was “sacrosanct” (too valuable to interfere with), around the rest of the borough.
He said the council’s future housing plan, its core growth strategy, now due to go out to a second round of public consultation, was “remarkable in its inequitability”.
Cllr Phillips, who is a Labour councillor, said this was an exercise in “nimbyism” from the leading Conservative group.
The council also revealed that because it has not delivered 75 per cent of its Government-mandated housing requirements over the past three years it is now subject to a formal “presumption in favour of sustainable development”.
This gives the council far less ground to be able to refuse developments, with many refused applications likely to pass at appeal due to the area’s lack of housing, with the need to provide these homes potentially overriding many other objections.
Leading councillors said green belt housing sites could still be refused also that these decisions would likely upheld by Government planning inspectors.
However, they made clear that developers could still pitch for homes in the green belt regardless.
Cllr Michael Powell, the council’s lead member for regeneration and planning, said in last night’s meeting that “doing nothing (around planning for more homes) is not an option”.
He laid out why the potential housing sites had been earmarked and that further consultation would be carried out, with no decisions finalised.
Cllr John Frudd said all sites listed for the green belt encroached into the countryside and rejected the idea that those attached to Ilkeston did not.
Meanwhile Cllr Alex Phillips said: “Ilkeston will pay the price for the Conservative group’s sheer arrogance towards this town.”
He produced a map which showed national data for where housing development had been approved in the past few years, with most in Erewash sitting around Ilkeston, with a smaller portion around Long Eaton.
Cllr Wayne Major, deputy leader of the authority, who was born and raised in Ilkeston, said he had a great attachment to the town and that more housing in the area would provide a significant amount of investment into the area. However, he said housing needed to be of the right mix, including affordable housing.
At this point in the virtual meeting, Cllr Major claimed Labour councillor Glennice Birkin had raised two fingers at Cllr Major during his speech, for which she did not apologise when asked. The alleged gesture from Cllr Birkin was not displayed on the council’s stream of the meeting.
Cllr Major said he “understood the concern” of residents in areas where housing has been proposed and said that people coming out and campaigning was a good thing, which helps the consultation process and gets local views across.
Independent Cllr Danny Treacy said: “There are differences between certain bits of green belt. Green belt is green belt whether it is in Cotmanhay or Breadsall or Borrowash or Long Eaton. We should not be agreeing with this. The people have spoken. Do not build on this green belt. Please listen to them.”
Cllr Paul Macginnis said Erewash “has a housing problem” “and we need to fix it”.
Cllr Paul Shelton said without a future housing plan there is “nothing stopping a developer cherrypicking a parcel of green belt land, that they or the land owner have agreed to develop, and say they want to build 500 or 1,000 houses on that land”.
He said these plans could be refused by the council’s planning committee but would be highly likely to succeed at appeal without a plan for where houses would be accepted.
If this were to happen, Cllr Shelton said, “the public would accuse us of being useless”.
Cllr Powell said: “The last thing we want to do is to let developers walk all over us and then go to Government and say ‘they haven’t done anything, we want to put it on green belt.’
“Well the Government will say no to green belt at this stage but there are many other things they (developers) can just do without us being involved, which is why it is urgent to adopt this revised development scheme.”
A green belt site has been earmarked for development at Cotmanhay Wood, though this has been reduced from original proposals due to a landowner pulling out. The original scheme had been for 600 homes and the reduced scheme could be around half this at 300.
Meanwhile, another earmarked site has been proposed at land to the south of Kirk Hallam for 600 homes and a relief road. This has now been substantially expanded, encircling a nature reserve, to take on the homes lost at Cotmanhay, which could see the scheme stretch to 900 homes.
Ilkeston will pay the price for the Conservative group’s sheer arrogance towards this town.
Cllr Alex Phillips