Council tied up in Local Plan, but it could have been so different...

BY the time you read this, Rossendale Council will have decided whether or not to adopt the Local Plan – its decision on what can, or can’t, be built, and where, in the borough for the next 20 years.

It’s a big deal – and an even bigger deal here in Rossendale due to the way the process has dragged on and on for years now.

Last week, government inspectors approved the plan - subject to dozens of minor alterations - which includes opening up green belt land, until now protected from development, to hundreds of new homes.

A lot of other green fields, not formally designated as protected but important green spaces, have been offered up to developers.

If you listen to what Rossendale Council’s Labour leadership is saying, they are working very hard to turn this into a central government vs local government issue.

In short, if you don’t like the decisions in the Local Plan, it’s not the council’s fault, it’s the government’s. They set the planning rules, and they ratified the plan.

Which is right – to an extent. The Government tells councils what it expects, on things like the number of houses which need to be built. This is because if they didn’t, would any council offer up any housing at all? It’s hardly a vote winner to start allowing building work near voters (although perhaps as voters, we should be more grown up - after all, we all want houses to live in).

But it is the council which has chosen which sites are suitable for housing developments. And it’s Rossendale Council which has sought ‘exceptional circumstances’ from Government planning inspectors to release land from the Green Belt to deliver both housing sites and employment sites over the next few years.

Make no mistake, the Government has not told Rossendale Council that Edenfield, population of around 2,000 people, must have an extra 400 homes built, and on green belt fields to boot. That’s the council’s proposal, and it has had to justify that to the Government.

The council’s argument for releasing a huge swathe of green land here is remarkable. If you read the Local Plan (all 200 pages of it) the council actually argues 400 extra homes in Edenfield will make the Green Belt boundary clearer, because they will permit the digging up of green fields between Edenfield and the A56, the busiest road in the borough.

Rossendale needs to provide space for 185 new homes a year over the current 16-year period. That means the Edenfield development will provide almost four years’ worth of home-building in Rossendale.

Indeed, of the eight plots of Green Belt removed from protection by the council, four are in Edenfield, and a fifth in Irwell Vale – a village which has flooded at least three times in the last decade. And yet the council is freeing up land there for housing development, arguing it’s run out of alternative sites because of…flooding risks.

It just doesn’t make sense. And perhaps that is why the council is so keen for you to believe that their hands are tied. In some ways they are - they have rules they have to stick to.

But it’s the current Labour leadership and council officers who have chosen to endorse this plan. They’ve chosen where new homes can and can’t be built. They’ve chosen to make Rossendale an attractive place for developers who want to build on green field sites rather than tricker brown field (already used) sites.

In years to come, the council will say at planning meetings that their hands are tied. And they are – because the Local Plan is set in stone once approved by the council. But it’s not the Government tying their hands, they’ve tied their own hands. And it could have been so, so different.