Hart Council still has no idea

Posted on January 23, 2016January 22, 2016

Hart District Council (HDC) still has no idea

Hart Council still has no idea.

Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction. And sometimes people who are normally quite sensible and rational as individuals can become delusional and irrational as part of a group, in a phenomenon known as “Groupthink”.

Please bear this in mind as you read about Hart’s plans to embark on a new consultation about the Local Plan.

The Local Elections are to be held on 5 May 2016. Prior to that, there’s a six week period of ‘purdah’ where the council can make no significant announcements nor take any significant decisions. This year, purdah starts on 24 March.

The Overview and Scrutiny Committee is examining what went wrong with the abandoned consultation, but won’t report until the end of February at the earliest.

I have been told by someone who spoke to Stephen Parker as Cabinet last night, that the revised Housing Need from the new SHMA is due in late February, with perhaps some highlights being released earlier. Of course, our expectation is that Hart’s (and Rushmoor’s and Surrey Heath’s) housing requirement will be significantly reduced.

However, the Council now plan to start the consultation again, either on 29 January, or a week later and run it for six weeks, taking us to either 11 March or 18 March. Not only that, they plan to ask those who submitted responses if they want to carry forward their responses to this new consultation, even though the evidence base is going to change mid-way through the consultation. Surely this would be highly irregular.

We think it will take at least two weeks for the results of the consultation to be properly analysed, meaning that they will not be available until after purdah has started, and so will not be able to be released until 6 May at the earliest.

Surely, it would be better for the council to wait until the new housing target is released and they have learned the lessons from the last shambolic consultation before starting the new one. Interestingly, they could do that, and still be able to publish the results at exactly the same time as if they started the consultation next week, as the graphic below demonstrates.

Local Plan Consultation Time Lines

Q. What do you call a blind deer? A. No idea

Q. What do you call a blind deer with no legs? A. Still no idea.

We suggest that readers who are concerned about this, write to their councillors and see if you can get them to see sense.

Consultation process to be examined by Overview & Scrutiny Committee

Posted on January 22, 2016August 15, 2023

Hart Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee is going to examine the decision making process surrounding the recently withdrawn Housing Options Consultation. The terms of reference are:

How decisions were made to approve and authorise the Refined Housing Options Consultation going ‘live’ in November 2015
How decisions were made to alter consultation documents part way through the consultation process
On what basis and rationale were decisions taken to withdraw the consultation
Identify actions that the Council should take and recommend improvements to the process in regards to future consultation exercises.

The Committee hope to produce a report during February 2016. They have invited representations from local groups, so We Heart Hart will put in a submission.

Consultation ends in farce

Posted on January 20, 2016January 28, 2016

Protest at Hart Council's Offices about the omnishambles Consultation.

Consultation ends in farce

Fleet News and Mail has carried the story of the Hart Local Plan consultation omnishambles in its 20 January 2016 edition. The full article can be found on this large image here. Now also online.

They cover our call for significant change in the Local Plan project, including replacing the Local Plan Steering Group who have presided over this sorry mess. We cannot continue to have a situation where with each year that goes by, the project slips by another year. They also cover our call for a proper brownfield solution to be included as one of the options.

Dermot Smith of Hook Action Against Over Development also criticises the council for wasting our time and money. Although he wrongly accuses We Heart Hart of having a vested interest in undermining the process.

To be clear, we want the process to be solid, we want a good Local Plan and quickly. We first highlighted the project management and governance issues last April and called for change. However, Hart Council ignored us, and all Hart residents are now paying the price.

Hart Consultation ends in farce.

Update 2 includes clip – We Heart Hart interviewed on Eagle Radio

Posted on January 18, 2016January 25, 2016

We Heart Hart interviewed on Eagle Radio.

We Heart Hart has been interviewed today by Eagle Radio about Hart Council’s (HDC) astonishing decision to abandon the Local Plan consultation. The clip will be broadcast on news bulletins on the hour between 6 am and 10am tomorrow, Wednesday 20 January 2016. You can tune-in on 96.4FM, DAB or online.

If and when we get a copy of the clip, we will post it below:

This has now been broadcast on Eagle news and they are running a story on their website, here. The clip can be found below:

We Heart Hart response to the decision to abandon the consultation

Posted on January 16, 2016January 28, 2016

Protest at Hart Council’s Offices.

After a period of reflection, we have now had time to compose a response to Hart’s astonishing decision to abandon the Local Plan consultation and set out what we think should happen to bring the Local Plan back on track. This has been sent to all councillors.

Readers may wish to copy a link to this page and send it to their ward councillor and add their own ideas on what should be done. A list of councillor contact details can be found here.

What should we think about Hart Council’s decision to call off the Local Plan consultation with only a day to go before it was due to close? Well, to misquote Churchill, this consultation has been a farce in a fiasco inside an omnishambles. Never has so little been achieved by so many with so much of our money.

This is but the latest entry in a catalogue of mismanagement and misjudgement.

Back in April 2015, Peter Village QC described Hart’s position as “hopeless” and precious little has changed since then. This abandoned consultation has not even covered the areas that he said should have been covered, namely, employment, retail, transport and infrastructure.

Now, let’s look at the timeline:

In October, 2013, when the earlier version of the plan was rejected by the Planning Inspector, the council said:

“that while the council operates under the interim strategy, it is working on an updated Local Plan…. We expect to put this out for consultation early next year, and would look to submit it to an inspector next autumn [2014],”

In April 2014, the plan was to have a resubmission plan ready for consultation in October 2015.
In February 2015, the plan was to have a resubmission plan ready for Autumn 2015.
As late as April last year, the council was insisting that they were still on track to deliver a Resubmission Plan by Autumn 2015, despite our warnings that the project was slipping.
We are now in a position, according to the latest schedule, where the Resubmission plan is due in Autumn 2016, but this has to be in serious doubt given the failure of this consultation and the fact that the evidence base won’t be revised until Spring 2016 and Hart have to hold a Regulation 18 consultation on the draft Local Plan, and heaven knows why it is planned for the Summer, when many people will be on holiday.

It is difficult to come to a conclusion other than the project management is woeful.

We need also to look at the governance of the project. Power on the Local Plan Steering Group (LPSG) is concentrated in the hands of urban councillors who have presided over this mess.

Role	Member
Cabinet Member for Planning (Chairman)	Stephen Parker (Con Fleet East)
The Leader of Council	Stephen Parker (Con Fleet East)
Cabinet Member for Housing	Stephen Gorys (Con – Odiham)
Chairman of Planning Committee	Simon Ambler (CCH – Crookham West and Ewshot)
Political Group Leaders	David Neighbour (Lib Dem – Yateley East) James Radley (CCH – Crookham East) Stephen Parker (Con – Fleet East)

Not only that, the quality of the deliverables to date is poor. By way of example, in January last year Hart commissioned a piece of work to test the new settlement and urban extension options. The published results of this work have not met the objectives set at the outset.

I have had many people send me Facebook messages, tweets and emails saying what a farce the process has been a shambles and a waste of time and money. One correspondent has even been moved to write a poem, saying they thought our leader has led us up the garden path and couldn’t even run a bath. In short the council is a laughing stock. Many people have also come to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that the reason the consultation has been called off is that the people were giving the ‘wrong answer’. There is no confidence in the council, the credibility of the whole Local Plan process is subterranean, with some complaining of “consultation fatigue”.

If the consultation is re-run at the end of January, it is extremely likely that parts of the new evidence base will be released during the consultation, thus meaning that the consultation will be run on the wrong evidence base, invalidating the results.

The Local Plan process is so far behind schedule that we are running the risk of Central Government stepping in and doing the Local Plan for us. Moreover, the Government is currently consulting on plans to remove the New Homes Bonus from councils that do not have a Local Plan, so this further failure may result in a hit to services or increases in council tax. So, it is clear we need a good Local Plan and quickly.

But before we can move forwards it is imperative that we fix the management and governance failings that have led us to this unhappy place. It is simply untenable for the current incumbents to carry on as if nothing has happened.

The changes we need are:

Resignation of the entire LPSG from their positions to be replaced by a new group of senior councillors from a balance of rural and urban wards.
I’m sorry to say it, but the cabinet member for planning and leader’s position is untenable after presiding over such a comedy of errors.
Whoever authorised the change to the questions mid-way through the consultation within the “officer” side must at least be severely reprimanded.
Hart need to appoint an experienced project manager to run the Local Plan project who should immediately review it and put together a realistic scope, objectives, deliverables, resource requirements, costs and timelines, publish it, and offer it for scrutiny by a recognised project assurance organisation
Only when the revised evidence base (SHMA and Employment Land Review) has been published, should Hart run a new Regulation 18 consultation covering employment, retail, transport, infrastructure as well as housing distribution as per the advice from Peter Village QC. The consultation should be put together and run by a competent third party organisation.
A standalone brownfield approach, covering all current brownfield sites in the SHLAA, the Stonegate Report and any new zones of opportunity identified in the call for sites should be added to the consultation as per the request of the 2,130 signatories of the WHH petition. It is simply not credible to set a “deliverable” criterion for brownfield sites when almost all of the green field sites subject to consultation were “not currently developable”. The council can’t have it one way for brownfield and another for greenfield sites. Many brownfield sites in the SHLAA/New Homes Booklet were “rejected” for apparently arbitrary reasons, they certainly did not appear to have more onerous constraints on them compared to those selected for consultation in Q6.
The differences between the site capacities shown in the New Homes Booklet compared to those in the official evidence base in the SHLAA (see point 4 in this letter to councillors, dated 20 November 2015 and Appendix) need to be rectified.
The process of the consultation needs to be simplified and improved, with the weighting system being resolved and published before the consultation starts.
The risks of a new town and urban extensions should be properly laid out (including creating capacity to take 3,000 houses from Rushmoor and Surrey Heath and the infrastructure costs).
All of the SHLAA sites should be offered for consultation in Q6, and the ranking approach changed to something more objective and able to be analysed across parishes such as “strongly oppose, oppose, support, strongly support”. It should be possible to pass comment without ranking sites that you don’t agree should be developed. It was particularly odd to see that the NHB rejected sites that had appeared in Neighbourhood plans.
You might do well to review my suggested 5-point plan that I tried to put to council in the Summer, but my question was censored.
The different infrastructure contribution regimes for different styles of development should be properly explained: a certain cabinet member was spreading misleading information about this during the recent consultation. My understanding is that only office conversions attract no S106/CIL whereas brownfield redevelopment is subject to the same contribution regime as green field development. It should also be explained that new homes in vacant office blocks attract council tax (and new homes bonus), which HDC retains, rather than business rates much of which is surrendered to the Government.
There also needs to be more robust processes for verifying the identity of all those participating in the consultation, and proper rules set on who can and cannot comment: theoretically the consultation just abandoned could have been answered by babes in arms in Aberdeen which is clearly ridiculous.

Only root and branch change of process and personnel will restore confidence and give enough credibility to create a sporting chance of getting a good Local Plan on time.

Press release is available for download below, together with a carousel of pictures of our shot demo outside Hart Offices.

Response to Hart’s decision to abandon the consultation

Download Now!286 Downloads

Protest at Hart Council's Offices about the consultation shambles.
Protest at Hart Council's Offices about the omnishambles Consultation
Protest at Hart's Offices about the Consultation farce
Protest at Hart Council's Offices about the consultation fiasco
Protest at Hart Council's Offices about the omnishambles Consultation.
Protest at Hart Council's Offices about the omnishambles Consultation

Protest at Hart Council’s Offices about the consultation shambles.

Protest at Hart Council’s Offices about the omnishambles Consultation

Protest at Hart’s Offices about the Consultation farce

Protest at Hart Council’s Offices about the consultation fiasco

Protest at Hart Council's Offices about the Consultation farce

Protest at Hart Council’s Offices about the omnishambles Consultation.

Protest at Hart Council’s Offices about the omnishambles Consultation

link

Hart Council fails to achieve its own testing objectives

Posted on January 15, 2016August 15, 2023

Back in January 2015, Hart commissioned a piece of work to test the Local Plan New Settlement and Strategic Urban Extension options. The testing was to include a range of items including as assessment of deliverability, a land use budget and identification and costing of major infrastructure items. However, it appears as though this work has not been completed properly, or if it has, it has not been published.

The detail of the scope and objectives is given below. Broadly the work was to include:

The “deliverability” of a new settlement and/or urban extension (ie suitability, availability and achievability) including the identification of any barriers to development and potential means to resolve them;

The identification and indicative costing of the major infrastructure items needed
to support development in that location.

Part 1 was to include an assessment of flood risk and the production of a “broad land use budget including an estimate of the capacity of the location. This includes a review of infrastructure provision, such as SPA mitigation, open space and education”.

Part 2 was to produce “recommendations on which infrastructure items might be best delivered
through planning obligations either on site or S106 and could potentially be funded through Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL)” and it was said that part 2 would focus “on the infrastructure requirements of sites to identify likely infrastructure impacts, subsequent costs and potential funding sources”.

Many of the sites in the SHLAA have yet to be assessed by officers to give their estimate of the capacity of the new town sites including sites SHL182, 184, 186, 187 and 188.

No schedule of infrastructure costs has been published covering roads, bridges and tunnels. The only thing we have had is the estimate of the costs of schools at £80-100m and the pitfully low estimate of a new motorway junction as £30m (when the J11 M4 improvements cost £65m). We have had no indication of the sources and amounts of funding required from the various agencies and nothing about developer contributions.

Perhaps the dog ate their homework

Hart Council debacle inspires poetry

Posted on January 15, 2016August 15, 2023

People send me stuff. The poem below, inspired by yesterday’s news, was sent to me to publish, provided I kept the identity of the author secret. So, I publish without further comment (to the tune of Oh! Mr Porter):

Oh! Mr Parker

Oh Mr Parker what shall we do?
The council is incompetent,
and now we know it’s true
You’ve pulled the consultation, you’ve really made a mess
Omnishambles sums it up, someone tell the press!

We told you many times to wait,
Don’t do it yet we said
Pause to see figures straight.
But no, against advice you blindly steamed ahead
You rushed it out, it’s all gone wrong, and now you’ve made your bed

Senior heads should surely roll
The council’s a laughing stock
Wasting money on a poll,
Spending all our funds on this really was quite slack
Who is accountable? Is Phillips coming back?

Someone has to sort this mess
And do it pretty quick
Picking up the pieces and telling porkies to the press
Trying to get this run again will be no easy feat,
No errors this time please, we don’t need a repeat.

Oh Mr Parker, you must stop these mistakes
You try to hang this on your staff
But the blame is yours to take
The leader’s led us up the garden path
The truth is out, it really is – he couldn’t run a bath!

Hart Council calls off Local Plan Consultation

Posted on January 14, 2016January 15, 2016

Breaking News: Hart calls off Local Plan Consultation

In an astonishing move, Hart Council have called off the Local Plan consultation with only 24 hours to go before the consultation was due to close.

Their full statement is (our emphasis):

From 2pm on Thursday 14 February Hart District Council stopped the Local Plan Consultation and removed the online response form from the website.

Leader of Hart District Council, Cllr Stephen Parker, said:

“We have found errors in the consultation material for our Local Plan Consultation. In order not to undermine the consultation process and to maintain a fair and transparent procedure, we have taken the decision to stop the consultation and have ceased our online response form.

I apologise to the residents and businesses of Hart for the inconvenience caused and I would like to reassure the public that by working with my colleagues to rectify the issues discovered, we will create a robust consultation going forward.”

It is deliciously ironic that they got the month wrong in the statement calling off the consultation.

Rushmoor calls for new town, urban extensions and dispersal in Hart

Posted on January 14, 2016January 14, 2016

Empty Offices at Farnborough, Rushmoor Borough, Hampshire.

Earlier this week Rushmoor cabinet considered its response to Hart’s Local Plan consultation and has come up with some controversial proposals.

First, their response says:

Rushmoor Borough Council supports the strategy of prioritising development on brownfield land, and on land outside the zone of influence for the Thames Basin Heaths Special Protection Area. Rushmoor expects that in addition to this, the first full consultation version of the Hart Local Plan will be based on a strategy to meet housing needs that requires a combination of the options set out in in the consultation paper. This will include dispersed development, strategic urban extensions and a new settlement at Winchfield in order to help deliver the housing need identified in the SHMA.

And in a veiled criticism of Hart’s strategy of holding the consultation now, when the evidence base is under review it says:

At this stage in the plan preparation process, Rushmoor Borough Council considers that the most appropriate strategy and timescale for meeting housing need across the HMA can only be identified once the update to the evidence base is in place. Moreover, until the implications of the conclusions in the updated evidence base are understood, it is not possible to comment on the detail of the housing options in isolation from other strategic cross boundary issues.

However, Rushmoor reserves the right to change its response, once the new evidence base is published:

It may be that once this evidence base is updated, some of Rushmoor’s comments may change or fall away, particularly when Hart publishes a complete version of its Local Plan for consultation, based on the most up to date evidence.

It seems to us that it would be poor strategy to commit to a new town now, when the evidence base is being reviewed. It may be that the threat to build 3,000 extra houses for Rushmoor and Surrey Heath falls away and Hart’s own alleged “need” also falls, in which case we will be able to build all of our remaining need on brownfield sites and have many sites left over for future planning periods. If we had a vision to keep our essential countryside, and not build a new town, then we would not need to meet Rushmoor’s need.

If you would like to ask Hart to abandon the new town alternative and create a brownfield solution to our housing needs, we urge you to respond to the Hart District Council consultation about the Local Plan and ask them to think again. We have created a dedicated consultation page and two guides to responding to the consultation that are available on the downloads below. The comments are designed to be cut and pasted into the boxes provided. It will be very powerful if you could edit the comments into your own words. Please do find time to respond to the consultation and play your part in saving our countryside.

Full version:

Responses to Local Plan Consultation

Download Now!329 Downloads

2 Minute version:

Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes

Download Now!318 Downloads

7 reasons to oppose a new town in Hart

Posted on January 13, 2016January 13, 2016

Which would you rather preserve – derelict eyesore or our wildlife?

As the consultation on the Hart District Local Plan draws to a close, it is worth reiterating the main reasons why you should oppose a new town and urban extensions in Hart.

They would open us up to 3,000 extra houses from Surrey Heath and Rushmoor, and we would get the worst of all worlds, a new town, urban extensions and green field dispersal.
The rate of building would then be used against us in the next planning period, so the problems we create today would be compounded into the future.
It would be bad strategy to commit to a new town now, when we know that the housing needs assessment is being revised, and in all likelihood it will be revise down
The proposed new town location is simply not suitable, in that there isn’t enough land to create the nirvana of a self contained new settlement promised by some HDC councillors, and would lead to a giant Hartley Winchook conurbation.
The infrastructure costs are astronomical, and the developer contributions will not meet these costs, thus pushing up council taxes in the future
There is an alternative brownfield solution that will meet the actual needs of Hart residents through providing specialist accommodation for the elderly and affordable starter homes for the young people struggling to get on the housing ladder.
Brownfield development is a more sustainable, greener alternative that will be kinder to the environment and provide infrastructure funding for our existing communities.