What is a “Local Plan”?
- All local planning authorities are required to have a Local Plan in place.
- Essentially, it maps out where and when development should take place over the next 15-20 years.
- The above proposals are only draft at this stage and there is likely to be two consultations and a public enquiry before they can be adopted.
What about the green belt?
- During the Plan-making process, Councils are able to review and amend the boundaries of a green belt, but only in exceptional circumstances and with good reasoning for doing so.
- The Labour District Council is therefore proposing to remove the above land from the green belt before allowing it to be developed for 860 new houses.
What type of housing is proposed?
- The draft Local Plan suggests 40% of all new developments will be social housing.
How will our infrastructure cope with this scale of new development?
- Disappointingly, Local Plans do not have to give much regard to how the existing infrastructure would cope with what is proposed.
- That means this is a “cart before the horse” Plan, in which the capacity of our schools, local health facilities and roads has not been adequately considered. There are no guarantees we will get the improvements required for our communities to be able to cope with this scale of development.
What do my local Conservative Councillors think?
- We are very strongly opposed to the Labour Council’s plans and remain committed, as we stated in our manifesto, to doing everything we can to protect our green belt.
- In Dronfield, and several of our other parishes, we are working hard to produce a Neighbourhood Plan, in which we will put forward sensible levels of development that our communities can cope with, whilst protecting our green belt, green fields and open spaces.