Tandridge Local Plan Sites Consultation

Deadline for comments, December 30. Please take part.

Deadline Friday, December 30 - last few days left to write in, or add more comments, to Tandridge Council's Local Plan Sites Consultation.

To save the local Green Belt from development, send comments to Tandridge Council by email localplan@tandridge.gov.uk or by letter to Planning Policy, Tandridge District Council, Council Offices, 8 Station Road East, Oxted, Surrey, RH8 0BT. Or you can use the Council's consultation portal on this link click here. See 'Local Plan: Sites Consultation'. You will have to register first to be able to take part this way.

Please include:

• how the site meets all the 5 purposes of the Green Belt which are: checking urban sprawl, preventing towns merging, safeguarding the countryside from encroachment, preserving the setting and special character of historic towns, assisting urban regeneration (for example by keeping pressure on for the redevelopment of the Oxted gasholder site).
• all infrastructure constraints including lack of viable access points.

The Council has graded a large number of Green Belt sites as 'amber' which means they are being considered for new housing development. They include: OXT 006 Chichele field (150 units) and OXT 007 Stoney field (250 units) in Oxted, and OXT 025 Land at Holland Road, Hurst Green (200 units) together with a cluster of nearby sites in Hurst Green.

To read the Council's site list click here

Some Green Belt sites have been graded as 'red' and unsuitable for development. However, these are still marked as 'deliverable and developable' and they are not safe from development. Please also comment on these sites.

You might also want to comment on proposed housing development of non-Green Belt sites like OXT 016 (gasholder) and OXT 065 (Ellice Road car park).

It is useful to read the Council's landscape assessments and ecology assessments for the sites which are the 'LCSS' and 'SBEA' documents on this link: click here

You may want to agree or disagree with, or add to, what has been said.

Additional sites, which have not yet been assessed by the Council but can be commented on, are listed under 'HELAA Appendix 8 - Additional Sites for HELAA 2017.' These include Land south of Springfield, east of Beadles Lane, Old Oxted (120 units) which is located between the Old Oxted Conservation Area and the Broadham Green/Spring Lane Conservation Area and serves an important purpose as a setting for both these areas.

OLRG has once again commissioned legal and planning experts to draw up a response to the Sites Consultation. They will be addressing the inflated housing need figure and also the HELAA 2016 site assessments and Green Belt Assessment Part 2 which do not meet the requirements of Government guidance and omit key evidence.

As well as commenting on the sites, general comments you could make are:

• The housing need figure of 9,400 houses, which is almost 4 times the current requirement, is inflated and wrong. By accepting it, the Council is contradicting evidence its own barrister gave to the Planning Inspectorate at a Public Inquiry in 2014.
• The HELAA 2016 site assessments and Green Belt Assessment Part 2 do not meet the requirements of Government guidance and omit key evidence so are not fit for purpose for developing a sound Local Plan.
• There has still been no consideration made of either the pressures on existing infrastructure or new infrastructure provision for the sites in the consultation.
• The Council has not taken notice of the views expressed by residents in their responses to its first consultation and its Local Plan proposals do not reflect the needs and priorities of the community as required by the National Planning Policy Framework.