Hart Council fails to achieve its own testing objectives

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