National planning revamp would remove vital piece of democracy

IT seems a long time ago when we used to get wound up about planning matters here in Rossendale - but like so many things during the pandemic, things have carried on as normal, just differently.

Rossendale still needs a local plan - the document which determines what the preferred use for every piece of land in the borough is - and there’s still no consensus on where the thousands of new homes the Government expects Rossendale to find space for, should be built.

Last week, as the Government seeks to return the political agenda to a more normal set of issues, it outlined what has been described as the biggest overhaul of the planning system in generations.

It promised that the planning system would become more democratic, yet also faster. Not for the first time, it subtly pointed blame at local councils for planning decisions taking too long to decide.

At the heart of the plans is a determination for every plot of land in the country to be assigned one of three statuses: growth, renewal or protection. This is essentially what a Local Plan does anyway, although in more detail. The problem here in Rossendale is that no-one can agree on a Local Plan.

Rossendale isn’t alone in this, despite the impression local Conservatives give. According to the Government, up to 50 per cent of councils don’t have a Local Plan, largely because generally, people don’t like development near their homes, so object to Local Plans which say as much.

Here in Rossendale, we have the peculiar situation of local Conservatives - the MP and councillors - making life as hard as possible to create a Local Plan by supporting those who oppose new home building, while at the same time supporting a Conservative government which is demanding we find room for thousands more homes.

In this new world, that would have to be resolved.

Once a decision is taken to place a piece of land in ‘growth’ for example, developers would automatically have the right to build new homes there - the battle at the planning committee on the merits of each individual scheme would be removed.

In practice, a very important piece of local democracy is being taken away from us. Councils would be reduced to debating the design of buildings, rather than whether they should be built there in that way.

This has the potential to be really bad news for local people here in Rossendale. Take Edenfield, when the posters opposing proposals to potentially allow hundreds of new homes on fields around

●● An Edenfield Community Neighbourhood Forum Local Plan consultation event held in February this year the village are still visible in the village.

Even if those fields are allocated for housing in the next Local Plan, under current rules, the council would be able to influence many aspects of any planning application which came forward and, crucially, stop any development if there was a legitimate reason to do so, such as the discovery of rare animals on a site, or if an area was subsequently found to be a flood risk.

Under the new proposals, the development of those fields would be a given, with just so-called ‘reserved matters’ such as how the new homes will look. There would be little, if any, room for local people to object what was being proposed.

Apparently, this all gives us a greater say in what is happening in our area. On the face of it, it will just make the battle over the Local Plan even more intense - under the new plans, once decided, the Local Plan becomes a developer’s charter, with little involvement of those of who pay our taxes here in Rossendale.

The Scribbler’s views do not necessarily represent those of the Free Press.