OLRG has submitted its expert opinion response to the consultation on the final version of the Plan. In it, we have made detailed alternative proposals for rewriting the Plan - and to deliver infrastructure, to correct the Green Belt assessments, and to provide higher numbers of affordable housing.
We have also made submissions to the Council's three previous Local Plan consultations. To read these submissions, click on the links in the box at the top of the front page of this website. All our submissions have been drawn up under guidance from legal and planning experts.
On 19 December 2018, the Tandridge Local Plan was approved for submission to the Planning Inspectorate for Examination. The seven Conservative Councillors on the Planning Policy Committee voted it through, the three OLRG/Independents voted against, and the three Liberal Democrats abstained.
The Plan proposes 4,000 houses in a 'garden community' on the Green Belt in South Godstone, release of Green Belt around the main settlements including Hurst Green, and increasing building density putting even greater pressure on infrastructure.
In addition, it has assessed numerous Green Belt sites as "deliverable and developable."
For three years now and right from the start of the Local Plan process, we have made clear the problems with the Council's work. Members have funded expert advice which we have given to the Council at every one of the Local Plan consultations - and in separate QC opinion. We have given the Council every opportunity at every point in the process to put things right but it has not done so.
OLRG has always said that the Council's repeated claims that the Plan is 'infrastructure led' are not supported by the evidence. This is now very clear from the consultation responses to the draft Plan from infrastructure providers such as Surrey County Council and the Local Enterprise Partnership Coast to Capital, with their denials of the Council's claims that they will fund infrastructure provision.
Overwhelmingly, the items listed in the Infrastructure Delivery Plan read as policy objectives, statements of intent, or simply a wish list, rather than as identifiable projects which have a reasonable prospect of being delivered.
The claim that there will be 'thousands of new jobs' is also not supported by the evidence. It seems a wholly unrealistic statement, given the rural nature of the District and the constraint to jobs growth through ever increasing competition from nearby expanding larger population and economic centres.
The Plan fails to maximise opportunities for affordable housing. It has set affordable housing thresholds of just 20% in the built-up areas and 40% elsewhere and for Green Belt sites. And yet the Council's own viability assessments show that higher affordable housing requirements, in some cases considerably higher, could be achieved.
The Green Belt assessments have not been carried out properly and in accordance with national policy.
These are just a few examples of the problems with the Council's Local Plan work.
