Listen to local people’s views on the on planning issues

Heed local people’s planning views

Having once again listened to the Budget and read my 257 pages of the Cornwall Local Plan I stress that it does not contain sufficient information to enable anyone to make a correctly balanced decision and I am convinced it only contains levels of information in order to protect against the possible threat of an unjustified higher figure. Not too long ago Eric Pickles stated: “The views of local people must be listened to ” yet the Inspector’s preliminary findings raise ‘key concerns’ about our local plan’s soundness and that, in its current form, and therefore the National Planning Policies would have to continue to be used for planning decisions – it is because we are accused of not religiously following the NPPF our local plan was termed unsound.

The NPPF states local plans should be aspirational but also realistic and they should address implications of economic, social and environmental change. Yet it only the local public who seem to know just how low the average wage levels are in Cornwall and so for a vast majority of residents a council rented property is the only priority, so why does Government cuts. So it is CC that knows what increase in housing development our infrastructure can accept.

I do not see any evidence from the Inspector that he has taken into account land for local food production, or the fact bus routes are not increasing and, more important, that there is any reasonable prospect the 55,000 council houses and relevant infrastructure is deliverable in a timely fashion, especially when between 2010 and 2015 we only delivered 12,250 completions when an additional 24,181 had already been given planning permission. Throughout the same period we experienced over-subscriptions to schools, NHS failing its targets, roads deteriorating, the closure of public toilets, libraries, bus transport reductions and massive public redundancies.

The Inspector insists we increase ‘our’ housing target by 7% to account for second and holiday homes, yet I thought we were against second-home ownership and were looking at ways to prevent this?

The Inspector refers to ensuring we must consider market signals yet I do not see any references to the 2011 Census for Population and Households which states that the report contains information critical for local authorities when assessing and planning housing needs. The report states the average housing size since 1973 has been less than three and has consistently decreased to its present number of 2.3 so who are we building these three and four bedroom properties for? The report states rural areas always have the lowest growth areas, West Somerset had a negative growth.The report shows how much more Cornwall is already overpopulated compared with Devon, Wales, North East and North West and that no region in Cornwall is in the lowest population density.