Tax bills set for £60 rise
COUNCIL tax bills across the Valley look set to rise by at least £60 a year after more proposals were finalised.
The Lancashire Police and Crime Panel backed the recommendation of police commissioner Clive Grunshaw for a 7.1 per cent rise, adding £10 to the annual bill of a Band A terraced houses and £15 for a Band D family home.
The rise will come on top of the 4.99 per cent rise proposed by the county council, while Rossendale council this week has announced plans for its own 1.99pc precept rise. The LCC ‘precept’ would add £46 to the annual bill of a Band A home and £70 for a Band D property. The Rossendale BC hike would be £3.71 for Band A and £5.56 for Band D.
Police chief Mr Grunshaw said he was following government guidance over the increase from April 1 to pay for 153 extra officers, but branded the system of financing policing ‘flawed, unfair and unjust.’
He said there would be 54 more officers in the East of the county including 19 response officers and five neighbourhood bobbies with more than 60 deployed Lancashire-wide.
Rossendale’s Coun Jackie Oakes expressed fears that extra officers in the East of the county could be swallowed up by Burnley at the expense of her borough.
IN a world where every day brings with it new news on our country’s fight against a pandemic, be that the number of people we’ve lost, or the number of people we’ve vaccinated, it can be easy to lose sight of other important developments.
But the more this column digs in to the government plans to reform the UK’s planning system, the more it is possible to fear that we could lose Rossendale as we know it.
As has been extensively reported in recent years, Rossendale has been under a lot of pressure to provide space to build more homes. A rare united front between Rossendale Council and local MP Jake Berry resulted in the size of the demand being reduced, but make no mistake, the pressure to keep letting builders build will continue.
Last week, the government announced plans to empower councils to enforce what it called ‘beautiful design’ of new developments, with the word ‘beauty’ enshrined in planning rules for the first time since 1947.
Sounds impressive doesn’t it? From now on, only beautiful buildings will be built. Hurrah.
Only, lets get real. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – and when push comes to shove, who is going to judge what Rossendale Council considers ugly and what a developer considers affordably beautiful?
The problem for Rossendale is that the Government is also about to make it far harder for local communities to stop unsuitable developments being built in the first place. Under other planning reforms, councils will have to allocate all land one of a number of categories, with a presumption that developments which are permitted within a category will be given default approval.
I can’t think of a single resident who would swap being able to fight a planning application for the ability to help shape what colour stone it will use.
Across the Valley, there are numerous planning applications which, in theory, conform with existing planning rules and allocations, but which residents think they are just wrong. Take the large housing estate proposed off the Grane Road underneath Holden reservoir. Hundreds of residents are worried about it, and with good reason.
But are the reasons good enough to halt the development? evelopment? At the moment, the council can decide whether or not to approve the development, but it needs very strong reasons to reject it – because developers are perfectly happy to take their fight to the planning inspector, who can over-rule the council.
Sadly, the planning inspector recently has over-ruled local democracy around here on a number of occasions, so somaybe maybe having new rules which make it clearer that if land is ear-marked for housing, expect housing to be built, is more honest.
To a certain extent, the idea of local control of what gets built and where is a bit of a sham. Ultimately, the rules are set in London and the council has to adhere to them. Thay’s why it makes it so surreal to see Tory councillors and Mr Berry so often play politics with local planning applications – whether they will be built to or not is determined by rules set by Tory ministers, not local Labour council cabinet members.
The right to fight to protect Rossendale’s character could be about to get much harder – even if we might be allowed to say which colour brick we’d like new houses to built in.