Minutes:
JM stated that he has previously asked NH what the views of the officers and the committee were going to be on applications coming in on a draft allocation site and NH had stated that that clearly until adoption the new plan carried limited weight but with the amount of study that had been undertaken on the new sites before they had been accepted for draft allocation and the fact that they had been put forward by the council as their preferred areas it would be unrealistic to publicly oppose them and as such they would be as supportive as they could provide there were no technical reasons for objecting to a site.
NH stated that he does not recall saying that we could support them unequivocally because the council has to be conscious of the fact that there is clear government guidance irrespective of how much weight that can be given to an emerging local plan and as a local plan progresses towards adoption more weight can be applied to it dependent upon the number of outstanding objections to that allocation. He stated that if there is a proposed allocation which has no outstanding objections to it and you have reached Reg 19 stage then you could give weight to the emerging allocation but at the current point in time the council is only at reg 18 stage and we have objections to nearly all of the allocations there are going to be issues with regards to giving weight to those.
JM stated that he posed the question in order to be able to get a better understanding of why from his experience quite a few of the draft allocation sites are at pre app stage receiving responses that are contrary to the draft allocation in terms of the scale in particular but often the principle of it even being a suitable site when the councils study has identified them as the preferred sites.JM added that the current local plan is out of date and will not be at Reg 19 stage till 2025 which will mean that adoption will be likely to be in 2026 meaning that the local plan will be 12 years old.JM asked where developers should be directed to if not towards the draft allocations.
NH stated that the pre apps are submitted in respect of the anticipation that an application is going to be made and determined under the terms of the adopted local plan and officers give their advice in that context. In the future the sites and position of those sites that are coming forward for pre app and what the position is for those allocations along with what stage of the new local plan the council is at along with the objections whether they are outstanding or resolved are all factors which need to be considered as things are changing all the time.
JM stated that reality at the current time is that there are very few sites that aren’t actual allocations or the obvious elements under the existing local plan that have not been built out. He questioned whether everything needs to stop until 2026.
NH stated that all the remaining BCP parcels of land are still there to be brought forward if they haven’t come forward yet through an application or pending application and also the council windfall policy.
JM stated that a lot of those are under 250 and therefore meet the windfall policy and are still receiving negative responses. NH made the point that you cannot say that every site on the edge of a market town is automatically acceptable just because it is a windfall site it has to go through a technical assessment to see whether it is appropriate or not.
NH stated that there is a non-statutory consultation being undertaken by National Grid for overhead powerlines that are proposed to be routed between Tydd St Gile and Newton. The proposals can be seen on the National Grid website.
There is likely to be another powerline proposal coming forward and not likely to be in the district but will be adjacent.
The Medworth Wisbech Incinerator decision is imminent following the inquiry.
Councillor Mrs Laws passed on her thanks to NH for all his assistance and help and wished him well for the future.