Hart District Local Plan in Hart District, Hampshire, England
In response to Hart Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee’s request for contributions from local groups to their investigation into the Local Plan Consultation debacle, We Heart Hart have sent in their thoughts on the matter.
The full response is available form the download below:
Hart District Council Offices in Fleet, Hampshire.
After the Local Plan consultation debacle, we have put a series of questions to Hart Council that will be answered at their meeting on 28 January 2016. Please do come along if you can.
The full questions can be found on the download below, and cover whether Hart Council has a project plan we can believe in; the progress (or otherwise) made in testing the Winchfield new town proposals; what happened to the 1,800 dwellings that Hart said in September could be built on brownfield sites; discrepancies between the consultation documents and the official SHLAA; how well we are meeting the needs of the young and elderly; the risks of re-running the consultation now, given the housing target (SHMA) is about to change and of course, seeking clarity on who instigated and authorised the fateful changes to the consultation materials part way through.
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.
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:
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:
“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],”
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:
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.
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
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
We Heart Hart has been interviewed for the Breeze radio about the calling off of the Hart Local Plan consultation.
We understand the interview will be broadcast on news bulletins today, Friday 15 January 2016.
The local frequency for Breeze is 107.6 FM, and can also be found on-line. Full details on how to listen to Breeze can be found here.
[Update]
The clip is available below:
[/Update]
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.
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:
2 Minute version:
Empty Offices at Farnborough, Rushmoor Borough, Hampshire
While all of our eyes have been on the Hart Consultation about the Local Plan, Rushmoor has also been busy on its own Local Plan. The most important point is that Rushmoor is revising the SHMA and the Employment Land Review which will:
be beneficial in assisting with a response to a number of comments received through the consultation, which challenged elements of the evidence base, and in particular, raised objection to the fact that the potential shortfall in housing supply in Rushmoor should be accommodated in Hart.
We might add that it was largely We Heart Hart supporters who made these comments – so thank you very much for your contributions. It does show that reasoned analysis of the evidence base can lead to real change, at least in Rushmoor.
In addition, as well as making reference to the Government’s lower population and household forecasts, Rushmoor say that “all of the three major forecasting houses that produce employment forecasts at local authority level have updated forecasts since those used in the SHMA and the ELR”. We Heart Hart have strongly challenged the previous jobs forecasts, so we can only hope that these forecasting houses have come up with something more reasonable.
Rushmoor is also revising its land bank database (SHLAA), and this should be available in early 2016.
Interestingly, Rushmoor has also delayed its Local Plan by up to a year in total to cater for these revisions to the evidence base. Rushmoor’s next consultation, built upon the new evidence base will be in October 2016.
We find it difficult to see how Hart is going to manage to produce a full draft Local Plan by the Summer of this year, when the updated evidence base is not going to be available until the Spring, and it is going to take Rushmoor at least 6 months to process that information and produce the next draft of its Plan.
Rushmoor has also provided a response to Hart’s Housing Options consultation that we will cover in another post.
