Response to Face IT article in Fleet News and Mail

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Vacant Block at Ancells Farm, Fleet, Hampshire

FACE IT have been quoted in this week’s Fleet News & Mail, claiming that the “urban extension option may sound like a ‘brownfield’ solution but would actually mean an extra 2,173 homes being built on green fields in Fleet and Hook”.

It does appear that all of the efforts they have put into their campaign around the Hart Council’s Housing Option Consultation has exhausted them to such an extent that they now misunderstand the difference between types of development because nobody is arguing that urban extensions are somehow brownfield development in disguise.

They make spurious claims about school places, after making up their own estimate of how many extra school places might be required without doing a proper population projection.  Note that Hampshire County Council have not put in place any plans beyond 2018, are forecasting a surplus of secondary school places at that time and a reduction in the birth rate as well as admitting that Hart schools are educating many children from outside the district.

They also make some claims about the scale of development that has occurred in Fleet, Church Crookham and Hook and about how many houses would end up being built around Fleet and Hook under each of the options Hart has put forward. It is not clear where they get their numbers from, because they don’t tally with the figures we put together.

However, nobody would dispute that Hook in particular has seen a big rise in housing in both absolute and relative terms. But what we find difficult to understand is why Hook’s Neighbourhood Planning team and Parish Council are advocating the new town option as their first choice which would deliver more than 1,800 houses in Hook Parish and effectively coalesce Hartley Wintney, Winchfield and Hook into a giant conurbation that might be named Hartley Winchook. This is more houses than the urban extension they oppose (730 houses), more than the dispersal option put forward by Hart Council (204 houses) and more than the brownfield solution put forward by We Heart Hart (only 57 new dwellings to be permitted).

FACE IT rightly say that the combination of Fleet, Church Crookham, Elvetham Heath and Ewshot (greater Fleet) has seen a lot of new housing in absolute terms over recent years. However, this is only part of the story as all parts of the district have seen significant development. When you look at the amount of new housing in proportion to size, the percentage increase for greater Fleet over the planning period of 2011-2031 is forecast to be around 17% for the dispersal and urban extension options and 14% with the new town option. This is below the average for the whole district at 21%, 18% and 18% respectively for each option and well below the percentage increases for places like Hartley Wintney which is forecast to see 34%, 39% and 21% increases for each of the options put forward by Hart.

The brownfield option that We Heart Hart has put forward has the potential to meet all of the remaining housing need and results in a more balanced distribution across the district in proportion to the size of existing settlements.  Our solution would result in a 23% increase for the greater Fleet area, 22% for Hartley Wintney and 27% for the smaller parishes that include Winchfield.

The proposed densities in the brownfield option are not at all demanding, with an average density on the SHLAA sites of around 25 dwellings per hectare.  The proposed densities on the vacant office blocks are no different to some developments that Hart has already permitted on Fleet Road, such as the new McCarthy and Stone development.  Our proposals do not include Pyestock (aka Hartland Park), which could deliver even more houses on brownfield sites into the future if Hart Council is successful in reallocating that site for housing.

We do agree with FACE IT, that we need to take a strategic view of the future, but we disagree on what that strategic vision might be.  In our view, continuing to concrete over green fields equivalent to 25 football pitches each year is not at all sustainable and our children and grandchildren would not thank us for doing that.

The advantages of a brownfield solution are:

  • It preserves the very countryside that makes Hart such a great place to live,
  • Produces a greener solution, making better use of existing infrastructure and more efficient housing,
  • Delivers more of the smaller, more affordable housing of the types that we need to meet the needs of our young people aspiring to gain a foothold on the housing ladder,
  • Delivers more specialist accommodation for the elderly in the right places for them as well as freeing up larger properties for growing families,
  • Delivers infrastructure funding to existing communities where there is currently a £78m funding deficit
  • Lower risk of delivery because it is spread across a large number of sites with multiple developers

Of course, the new town proposal that is in the consultation has been undergoing testing for over a year now, and has identified a number of significant barriers including education, transport and foul water drainage.  The costs of the infrastructure required for a new town are astronomical and would never be met by developer contributions. If Hart were to choose the new town option, it runs the risk of not passing inspection because infrastructure delivery could not be guaranteed.

We hope that the new Strategic Housing Market Assessment, (SHMA) when it is eventually delivered in June will result in a lower housing target for Hart, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath. But until then, the threat of Hart having to build 3,000 for those districts is very real.  Support for a new town will create capacity to build these extra houses which will mean we will end up with the worst of all worlds, a new town, urban extensions and dispersal across the district.

So, we urge all residents of Hart to reject a new town, reject urban extensions and get behind a brownfield solution and give Hart Council further encouragement to step up their efforts in this regard by responding to the consultation and putting support for a brownfield solution in the comments.

We have created a dedicated consultation page and updated our 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.

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Responses to Local Plan Consultation
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Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
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Overview and Scrutiny Committee reports on consultation errors

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Hart Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee has produced its report in to the withdrawn Housing Options consultation.  Their report can be found here.

They make a number of recommendations:

  • Cabinet should consider whether the Council should adopt a code of practice to guide how future consultation exercises are undertaken. As an interim, the Joint Chief Executives should draw up and communicate to all officers’ clear guidance about how to conduct a consultation.
  • Staffing Committee should review the current Council structure to ensure that we have sufficient senior management support particularly at a time when the Council is undertaking significant projects and other areas of work.
  • The Joint Chief Executives should take a view on whether any training, capability or disciplinary action should be taken in respect of the findings of this report.
  • A document naming convention should be established for all documents saved by officers. The Council should expedite the introduction of SharePoint for document version management.
  • The processes for publishing on the Council website should be reviewed with the introduction of a two person check for any changes prior to publication When developing the timeline for future consultation exercises part of the process should include the user testing of documents and ensure wording has been reviewed as plain English.

These recommendations, especially when coupled with the decision to ask East Hampshire council to host and manage the plan making process, look sensible.

The key passage in what went wrong and why is:

During an informal conversation a senior planning policy officer mentioned the call to the Joint Chief Executive, Daryl Phillips [DP]. DP stated that he did not see it as a major issue, that there was no need to do anything at the time but that it could be reported as a factor to take into consideration when interpreting the findings from the consultation.

A senior planning policy officer subsequently decided that the response form provided online should be amended to include Dogmersfield and Crookham Village. Other officers, in accordance with the senior planning officer’s instructions, updated a word version of the document and this was published on 6 th January. The form that was updated and published was an earlier draft version of the document and apart from that new wording including Dogmersfield and Crookham Village, contained a number of other differences to the previous published form.

It will be interesting to see the Staffing Committee’s view on the Council structure and whether they recommend a strengthening of the senior management team.

We are slightly disappointed that their report has not addressed some of the wider issues we raised in our submission to the process.

It is now more important than ever that we get a good Local Plan published by the end of the year, or there is a significant risk the Government will step in and do the Local Plan for us.

We urge everyone to respond to the new consultation, and and ask Hart to create a brownfield solution to meet the housing needs of the young and elderly in Hart. We have created a dedicated consultation page, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they 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
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2 Minute version:

Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
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Hart Council flying blind on meeting the needs of the young and the elderly

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Hart Council Flying Blind on Housing Requirements

It has emerged that Hart Council have no effective way of monitoring how many dwellings of different types that have been built or permitted as part of the Local Plan. They have admitted that essentially they are flying blind and do not know how many 1 & 2-bed properties have been built or permitted and similarly do not know how many specialist units for the elderly are in the pipeline. This is despite the fact that the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) is very clear on how many homes of different types have to be built as part of the overall 7,534 requirement.

We asked questions at Council about this on 28 January and received short shrift, with the chairman refusing to allow the question about 1 & 2-bed homes to be put, and the question about accommodation for the elderly was not answered.  We followed up with FOI requests on both questions and have been told that the the information was available on Hart’s Planning portal.  It transpires that what they mean by this is that they expect members of the public to wade through hundreds of planning applications and hundreds of building control records to manually collate and report on the data, and even then, not all of the data required to answer the questions is available.

At first, we thought this was just obfuscation on the part of the council, but subsequent discussions with officers has revealed that Hart Officers would have to do exactly the same work to get at the answers.

What is particularly astonishing is that none of the councillors appear to have any interest at all in this and appear to be content to allow the council to fly blind. We don’t think this approach will stand up to scrutiny by an inspector, because the SHMA is very clear on the different types of housing that needs to be built.

To re-cap, according to the current Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA), Hart needs to build 7,534 dwellings in the plan period running from 2011-2032.

The SHMA is also very clear on the sizes and types of housing that needs to be built, including the number of affordable homes for the young and specialist housing for the elderly.

Hart Surrey Heath and Rushmoor SHMA Figure 9.8

Hart Surrey Heath and Rushmoor SHMA Figure 9.8

First, the quantity of houses that needs to be built by the number of bedrooms is covered in Figure 9.8, reproduced above. Working through the arithmetic reveals that we need to build around 3,800 1 & 2-bed dwellings, using Hart’s target of 40% affordable. Hart has built or permitted around 4,600 dwellings since 2011 and has no idea what the split is by number of bedrooms, and so has no idea how many more smaller, starter properties need to be built out of the remaining 2,934 to be permitted.

Hart Surrey Heath and Rushmoor SHMA Figure 10.15

Hart Surrey Heath and Rushmoor SHMA Figure 10.15

Second, the number of specialist units for the elderly is covered in Figure 10.15.  Between 2012 and 2030, Hart needs to provide 1,390 specialist units for the elderly and infirm. Extending this back to 2011, and out to 2032 at the 80 dwellings per annum rate identified in the report would give 1,650 units. To this must be added the further 940 registered care places in the graphic above. This gives a total of 2,590 additional units for the ageing population.  Hart has built or permitted around 4,600 dwellings since 2011 and has no idea how many specialist units for the elderly are in that 4,600. Consequently, Hart has no idea how many more of these specialist units need to be built out of the remaining 2,934 to be permitted.

Surely we cannot continue to go on with basic management tools missing from the Local Plan process and seemingly none of the councillors being at all concerned.

We live in hope that soon the council will be able to provide data on what has been built since 2011, but there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to get at the data for what has been permitted for the future.

If you would like to ask Hart to get a grip on the situation, and create a brownfield solution to meet the housing needs of the young and elderly in Hart, 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, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they 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
Responses to Local Plan Consultation
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2 Minute version:

Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
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Hart Council joins pilot scheme to create national brownfield register

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Brownfield site: vacant offices at Ancells Farm Business Park, Fleet, Hart District, Hampshire.

Brownfield site: vacant offices at Ancells Farm Business Park, Fleet, Hart District, Hampshire.

In a very positive move, it has been announced that Hart District Council has joined a Government pilot to create a national register of brownfield sites.  This means that Hart will be at the forefront of this initiative, which marks a significant improvement in the level of commitment towards brownfield development. Of course, this comes on the back of last week’s call for Pyestock (aka Hartland Park) to be released for housing.

Only last year, the leader of Hart Council ruled out the creation of a register of brownfield sites, so this move is very significant.

The other interesting development is that both deliverable and developable sites will be included in the new brownfield register.  This is a big difference to the consultation currently going on where only deliverable brownfield sites are included, even though most of the green field sites offered for consultation are not even developable:

To be regarded as suitable for housing our proposed criteria are that sites must be:

Available. This means that sites should be either deliverable or developable. Sites that are deliverable should be available and offer a suitable location for development now and be achievable with a realistic prospect that housing will be delivered on the site within five years and in particular that development of the site is viable. To be considered developable, sites are likely to come forward later on (e.g. between six and ten years). They should be in a suitable location for housing development and there should be a reasonable prospect the site will be available and that it could be viably developed at the point envisaged.

It is envisaged that the first draft of the register will be produced by the end of June 2016.

We welcome this development and will report back on any further developments.

More details of the proposals can be found in the pilot scheme manual here, and in the Government proposals for changes to the planning system, here.

If you would like to give Hart Council more encouragement to 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, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they 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
Responses to Local Plan Consultation
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2 Minute version:

Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
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If a new town is the answer, then Hart Council is asking the wrong question – CPRE

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Winchfield in Hart District, Hampshire

Winchfield

Hampshire Campaign to protect Rural England (CPRE) have published a new article on their website saying, “If a new town is the answer, then Hart is asking the wrong question”.

The article goes on to note that a new town at Winchfield will not deliver many homes during the plan period and so will be futile.  The CPRE also notes that there is evidence that the housing market assessment maybe 30-50% too high, echoing our analysis of a number of SHMAs in the South of England.

They also note that a new town is likely to build the wrong type of housing in the wrong place to meet the needs of the district, saying “Those in need of a £200,000 property close to urban amenities, public transport and employment may not be in the market for a £300,000 property in a remote dormitory village”.

We wholeheartedly agree with CPRE’s sentiments.

If you would like to give Hart Council more encouragement to persist in getting Pyestock released 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, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they 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
Responses to Local Plan Consultation
Download Now!428 Downloads

2 Minute version:

Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
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Hart Council calls for Pyestock to be released for housing

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Hartland Park (Pyestock) near Fleet, Hart District, Hampshire, warehouse development not started

Brownfield site: Hartland Park (Pyestock) near Fleet, Hart District, Hampshire could be released for housing.

Joint-CEO of Hart District Council, Daryl Phillips has called for Hartland Park (Pyestock) to be released for housing in an article in Fleet News and Mail. The article claims the site is on the market, and this appears to be confirmed by its presence on the Jones Lang Lasalle website here and here.

Hart Council believes that the 119-acre (48 Hectare) site could yield over 1,000 dwellings.  That would equate to an undemanding density of around 20 dwellings per hectare.  We think that opportunities for increasing density should be explored, taking account of the environmental sensitivity.  Who knows, there might even be sufficient space for new schools if it were shown that a new secondary school was required.  The old Bramshott Farm site across the road may well be earmarked as SANG.

The advantage of Pyestock as a site is that it is close to Fleet railway station and could be reached by bicycle or on foot and it is close to existing employment sites in Fleet and around Farnborough airport.  The site is very close to the M3 and the road system has already been improved in anticipation of thousands of lorry movements.

If the owners could be persuaded to release this site for housing, then it is certain that we would have sufficient brownfield capacity to meet or housing needs up to 2031 and beyond, as it would take our capacity up to over 3,500, when our remaining need to be permitted is 2,500. We definitely would not need a new town, nor would we need an urban extension.

If you would like to give Hart Council more encouragement to persist in getting Pyestock released 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, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they 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
Responses to Local Plan Consultation
Download Now!428 Downloads

2 Minute version:

Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
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New Housing Market Assessment delayed again

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Hart District Strategic Housing Market Assessment SHMA delayed again

According to an email we have seen from Rushmoor Borough Council, it appears as though the new Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) for Hart, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath has been delayed again until June 2016.

Back in January, Rushmoor said that the new SHMA and Employment Land Review (ELR) would be published in May 2016.  Around that time, Hart were saying “late-February” with perhaps some highlights a little earlier. Now, according to an email we have seen, dated today, the new SHMA and ELR have been pushed back until June, with publication of their draft submission Local Plan due in October or November 2016.  An extract of the email is shown below:

Key Milestones Dates
Publication of updated SHMA June 2016
Publication of updated ELR June 2016
Publish draft submission Local Plan October / November 2016
Submission of Local Plan, Sustainability Appraisal (SA) Report and Proposals Map to Planning Inspectorate February 2017
Hearing sessions May 2017
Receipt of Inspector’s Report October 2017
Adoption and publication of Local Plan and Proposals Map December 2017

Hart Council plans to publish a draft Local Plan (a plan in a similar state to the Local Plan Rushmoor sent out for consultation last Summer) in Summer 2016.  We find it difficult to believe that they will be able to stick to this timetable if the new evidence base is not going to be published until June.

Hart is now at significant risk of the Government stepping in and doing the Local Plan for them, as Government minister Brandon Lewis has said that Local Authorities may have their Local Plans written for them if they are not in place by early 2017.

As regular readers will know, this is not the first time the timetable has slipped as we reported here and here.

James Farm Nursery Hartley Wintney, Hart District, Hampshire

New SHLAA sites mean our remaining housing need can be met from brownfield sites alone

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James Farm Nursery Hartley Wintney, Hart District, Hampshire

James Farm Nursery Hartley Wintney

Hart Council has added a number of new sites to its SHLAA evidence base.  There is a mix of brownfield and green field sites, as we explore below, but the overall impact is to increase the brownfield capacity  to 2,493-2,535 units which is now enough to meet the remaining need of 2,500.

The sites are:

SHL25 Land attached to Brook House, Crondall, green field
SHL81 Vertu, Beacon Hill Road, Church Crookham, brownfield site, 65-70 units
SHL176 Hawley House, Hawley, in Blackwater and Hawley Parish, brownfield site, WHH estimate 8-10 units
SHL177 Land at Croft Lane, Hartley Wintney, green field site, WHH estimate
SHL178 Broden Stables & Stable Yard, Crondall, brownfield site 14-27 units
SHL179 Bowenhurst Lane, Crondall, brownfield site, 30-35 units
SHL180 Crondall Bee Farm, green field site
SHL181 Land south of Little Rye Farm, greenfield site
SHL189 Land at James Farm, Hartley Wintney, brownfield site, 8 units

We have been through each document and some have not yet been fully assessed by Hart’s Planners, so we have had to estimate the size of sites SHL176 and SHL177 using Google Maps and the capacity. Hart Council have not estimated the size of SHL180 either, but that site looks so remote and so close to Basingstoke Canal, that we feel it unlikely ever to be permitted so we have not bothered to estimate a size or capacity for it.

The total capacity of these new brownfield sites is 125-150 units, bringing our total estimate of brownfield capacity up to 2,493-2,535 units.

We have updated our table of brownfield sites and our brownfield thermometer accordingly.

Created using the Donation Thermometer plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/donation-thermometer/.2,350Hart District Brownfield Development Target3,993Hart District Brownfield Development Target170%

If you would like to ask Hart to abandon the new town and urban extension ideas 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, updated our two guides to responding to the consultation and they 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
Responses to Local Plan Consultation
Download Now!428 Downloads

2 Minute version:

Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
Respond to Local Plan Consultation in 2 minutes
Download Now!414 Downloads

 

Ideas to oppose the Watery Lane Development in Church Crookham

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Some of the opponents of the proposed Watery Lane development in Church Crookham have criticised We Heart Hart for not joining them in opposing building a housing estate there.  We cannot get involved in each and every planning application, but the material below outlines what we believe would be useful material for Face IT and other groups to use as they see fit to add to their case.

1. We don’t need this development

Hart is being asked to build too many houses, because the SHMA is flawed.  It starts with the 2011-based population projections, whereas the 2012-based projections would reduce the starting point by 1,800 dwellings (SHMA appendices p75).  The jobs forecasts are too optimistic, calling for a near doubling of the job creation rate over the plan period.  See the links below for more detail:

https://wehearthart.co.uk/2015/06/hart-is-being-asked-to-build-too-many-houses/

https://wehearthart.co.uk/2015/11/independent-expert-says-we-are-being-asked-to-build-too-many-houses/

https://wehearthart.co.uk/2015/05/revised-submission-to-owens-farm-hop-garden-road-appeal/

As a result of the over-stated need in the SHMA, the current land supply statement understates the land-supply position, therefore the Watery Lane development is not needed now.

2. Brownfield Solution

There is an alternative brownfield solution to meet the housing needs of the district. Our local MP also supports a brownfield solution:

https://wehearthart.co.uk/2015/11/there-is-a-brownfield-solution-to-harts-housing-needs/

https://wehearthart.co.uk/2015/10/ranil-says-no-to-winchfield-new-town-and-yes-to-brownfield/

3. Wrong type of Housing in the Wrong Place

A development such as Watery Lane would build the wrong type of housing in the wrong place to meet the needs of the district. Hart’s policy is to build 40% affordable and 60% market housing, or a split of about 3,014 affordable and 4,520 market to meet our overall need of 7,534. The SHMA (Figure 9.8) calls for 40.8% 1-bed and 33.2% 2-bed properties from our affordable housing target and 6.7% 1-bed and 28% 2-bed properties from our market housing target. This gives a total target of 1,532 1-bed and 2,266 2-bed properties.  No data has yet been forthcoming on how well or badly we are doing against these targets, but perhaps Face IT could join We Heart Hart in asking Hart to produce the information to allow us to know one way or the other.  More traditional housing estates in the countryside are likely to under-deliver on both affordable and smaller properties.

Similarly, the SHMA (Figure 10.15) calls for around 2,500 specialist units for the elderly, split into various categories to be built in Hart under the Local Plan.  We do not know how many have been built or permitted to date, but again it is self-evident that a housing estate in the country would not deliver specialist units for the elderly. Again, perhaps Face IT can join We Heart Hart in requesting that this information is released.

We do hope that the team opposing Watery Lane find this information helpful.

Hart Council fiddles while the budget burns

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Michael Deacon, the political sketch-writer for the Telegraph has recently bemoaned the fact that his role has become merely one of transcription as the quality of discourse in the House Of Commons has descended to such an extent all he needs to do is simply write down what is said, because the truth itself has become beyond parody.

It is with this in mind, that we ask you to read our account of part of the Hart Council meeting that took place on 25 February 2016.

There were a number of formalities about the minutes and questions from members of the public that we shall cover later in this post.

We then moved on the section of the meeting where the council signs off the minutes of meetings from committees.

The chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee raised what appeared to be a perfectly sensible point that members who are appointed to the O&S Committee of the newly formed Joint Procurement contract should also be members of Hart’s O&S Committee. We thought this would take about 30 seconds to resolve. How wrong we were.

After some back and forth discussion, the Leader proposed an ill-defined motion of amendment to agree with part of the suggestion, but leave unresolved some of the finer points of detail.

As he finished speaking, the room was filled by the sound of various moans and grunts, resembling the sound of a bagpiper tuning up, as a number of councillors inflated themselves into a state of maximum self-importance.  It is a pity that these inflation efforts were inversely matched by their vacuous contributions.

“How will we cope”, demanded one councillor, “if the meetings of this new committee are arranged for a time when Hart’s delegates might have an appointment at the hairdressers?”

At this point, there was a loud sucking noise as the life-force began to be drained from everyone in the room, as if a dementor had entered the building.

One can only speculate as to the motives of the councillors involved for indulging in such filibustering. Perhaps it was displacement activity, because the upcoming discussion on how to fix the forecast £1.16m budget deficit in 2017/18 was going to be “too technical” for them.

After the discussion about the finer points of the details of the process how to select two people to sit on the joint O&S Committee had continued for 20 minutes, I was overwhelmed by an insatiable desire to go home and watch some paint dry.

Now I will never know how they propose to fix the deficit, which is around 10% of spending, a bigger budget deficit than Greece. But no doubt they did work out how to resolve a diary clash.

 

The first item on the agenda was the minutes of the previous meeting.  We did point out that there was a factual inaccuracy in the minutes, in that the information the chairman said was available on the planning portal is not in fact available. I also informed him that the FOI request the minutes advised me to make to find out how many 1 & 2-bed homes we had built or permitted and how many specialist units for the elderly we had built had in fact been rejected.  The minutes were not amended, but were signed off.

It is striking that not a single councillor was endowed with enough curiosity to find out how well Hart had been meeting the housing needs of the District as expressed in the SHMA.

Last night we asked what we thought were three relatively innocuous questions, which we will cover in another post.

The first was a request to understand more about the remit and objectives of the Cabinet Member for Town and Village Regeneration.  We found it rather odd that the Leader of the council did not think his own cabinet member was capable of answering questions about his own role.  The answer we got was bland and did not include mention of a single objective, other than it had been deemed important that the role encompassed car-parking charges, because of the important link between car-parking and regeneration.

The second question was about the proposals in the corporate plan for the council to create a trading entity to build houses.  We got a reasonable response to this question, but it is clear that the idea is at a very early stage and nothing has yet been agreed.

Finally, we tried to ask a question whose answer was designed to provide evidence to combat developers who are insisting that Hart is not building enough houses.  This was inspired by the recent House of Lords report that showed that in recent years 100,000 fewer houses were built each year than were granted permission. Hart Council only has control over granting permission and cannot control the rate of building.  The question simply asked “for each of the past five years on how many houses have been permitted and how many built in Hart District.  This was ruled ‘too technical’ for council and will be referred to the FOI request process.