Thanet Conservative Group is calling for Thanet’s Local Plan – a blueprint for housing, business and infrastructure development up to 2031- to be revoked.
Group leader Reece Pugh will bring a motion to a full council meeting next week which calls for the Plan to be ditched with consultation launched for a new Local Plan. The group also asks for the removal of current housing allocations on Grade 1 agricultural land to be, if necessary, reallocated to land of poorer quality or brownfield sites and for more housing allocation on brownfield and underutilised sites within town centres.
The Local Plan
Thanet’s Local Plan was adopted on 9 July 2020 and the housing need calculated up to 2031 was for 17,140 new isle homes. This was based on 2014 population projections which have since been called into question for over-inflating need.
The previous Government indicated that, in 2024, there would be a review of the impacts of the housing “standard method”, and the latest population and household projections would be published. However, these have now been delayed until 2025, setting back Thanet’s intended programme by about a year.
In 2021 a partial update to the Local Plan was being prepared to cover needs up to 2040 – and included the need for land/sites to accommodate an additional 4,000-4,500 dwellings to make a total of 21,700 homes.
Thanet council also issued two calls for sites and some 200 were put forward.
In June 2022, Cabinet agreed a new Local Development Scheme (LDS). The LDS needs to be updated, to reflect changes in circumstances affecting Local Plan progression.
Call for changes
In 2022 then- Thanet council leader Ash Ashbee said she would ask government to allow the district to halt the Plan review and proposed to raise argument to get the housing need target for Thanet reduced. It followed a call by Thanet Green Party to halt the Local Plan review and reset building targets.
In May this year MP Sir Roger Gale wrote to then-MP Lee Rowley asking if Thanet could produce a new Plan that “protects what little is left of our agricultural land and seeks to base further housing development upon an adequate supply of supporting medical and educational infrastructure.”
He criticised Thanet council for not taking action to revise the Local Plan due to waiting for changes to national planning policy and awaiting the outcome of the now resolved legal challenges to the development consent order for Manston airport.
His call was backed by the Westgate and Garlinge Action Group against housing development which is particularly concerned about the plans for 1600 houses on farmland in Birchington and 2000 homes on agricultural land at Westgate and Garlinge.
At a council meeting on October 10, Thanet Conservative group leader Reece Pugh will put forward a motion to revoke the current Local Plan.
Cllr Pugh said: “Many have suspected for some time that the method for calculating population growth across the life of the Local Plan was flawed and we have now received confirmation of this.
“We now need a new Local Plan that uses data from the 2021 Census, which will show that we require significantly less housing than our current Local Plan. Much has changed in Thanet since our Local Plan was adopted, we have had the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It is time for us to revoke our Local Plan and start a new plan that provides for what our residents actually need. TDC should be setting an example for other local authorities, ensuring that new homes fit in with local characteristics, provide clean energy systems and are built where we need them most.
“The provision of homes for the future is not political, nor should it be. I am calling on all councillors at Thanet District Council to support this motion so that we can do what is best for our residents and future generations.”
However, council leader Rick Everitt (Labour) brands the idea ‘foolish,’ saying council officers made it clear two months ago that the council has no power to revoke the Local Plan.
Cllr Everitt said: “The council does not have the legal authority to revoke the Local Plan and the Tories know it. Officers set out the position in detail in a cabinet report published in July.
“It is a foolish idea anyway, because rather than protecting agricultural land, it would leave the council with no local policy basis on which to consider housing applications for those sites or anywhere else. It would be open season for housing on the Green Wedges, which currently separate our towns, as well as on many other sites across the district currently protected by the plan.”
Powers
A report to councillors in July said: “The council does not have the power to unilaterally rescind the existing Local Plan before preparing a new plan. There is a power for the Secretary of State (SoS) to revoke a local plan at the request of a local planning authority. It is understood that no such request has ever been made, and the SoS has never exercised this power. MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government) advice is that there would be a very high bar for any such request.
“The SoS would have the responsibility for the decision and be potentially subject to judicial review and significant court costs. The SoS would also be potentially responsible for any damages sought by those developers whose sites had been allocated in the plan that was to be revoked. The justification for revocation would have to be considerably greater than a wish to amend the current plan.”
Officers add that there would likely be significant developer/landowner opposition to revocation.
Cllr Everitt says he previously wrote to the then Conservative Secretary of State, Michael Gove, asking him to call in and determine centrally individual planning applications for housing on Thanet’s agricultural land as decisions made by the minister cannot be appealed. The request was refused on the basis that the issue was not of sufficient importance.
Cllr Everitt added: “The current Conservative group leader voted to adopt the Local Plan in 2020. Pretending that it can be overturned at this stage is political game-playing of the worst kind. If the Tories genuinely believe the current plan can and should be revoked, why didn’t they do that when they were in power both locally and nationally from 2021 to 2023?
“We recognise the unease that the scale of proposed development creates in the communities affected, but all councils have to work within the law, both in terms of the current adopted plan and the timetable for developing a new one.
“We set out the timetable for a new plan in July and we have asked the new government for stronger powers to protect agricultural land, but even if granted these cannot be applied to sites already allocated as housing land.”
Deferred
The motion will be introduced at the full council meeting on October 10th.
If the council agrees to debate the motion, it will be deferred until the next meeting in December so that an officer report can be prepared to inform the debate.
Is this the Local Plan that was put in place and adopted by the UKIP and Tory administrations, in response to pressure from the “Birchington against the Local Plan” action group?
I see Cllr Pugh is asking for “the removal of current housing allocations on Grade 1 agricultural land to be, if necessary, reallocated to land of poorer quality or brownfield sites and for more housing allocation on brownfield […] sites […]”
Well, Cllr Pugh, there’s a huge brownfield site available right in the middle of Thanet, that’s been abandoned since 2014. All that’s needed is a small change to the Local Plan …m
Wasn’t Cllr Pugh one of the biggest advocates for RSP and helped get houses removed off Manston to all over Thanet ? He also had secret meetings with RSP’s MSE which nobody knew about and only came to light after an FOI request was put in.
Let’s not forget the original plan for Manston Airport by previous owner Stone Hill Park: 3,700 homes and up to 2,000 direct jobs with 9,000 further jobs created over the course of the project.
All the houses planned had to be transferred to other sites including Garlinge, Westgate and Birchington.
Is this the same, or a different,group of tories who fudged the last local plan in order to protect Manston?
Some are the same, some are different, and some don’t quite know, so they became TIGs.
But there’s no doubt that the misplaced plan to protect Manston for aviation only – against all the expert opinion – has cost Thanet dearly.
It’s quite bizarre that one of the biggest trumpeters in favour of forcing house building anywhere other than Manston is once again warming up his embroucher in order to protest against the consequences of the policy he supported in the first place.
I speak, of course, of Sir Rodger Gale.
Brilliant news!
Forgive me if I am wrong but isn’t the local plan they are moaning about one the Tories drew up themselves? Not only that they failed to produce a local plan in a timely manner in an effort to suppress the land value of Manston to help RSP out and in the interim the Tory government increased housing targets from 12,500 to over 18,000. Add that to the 2,500 that the Tories removed from Manston airport against officers advice you have thousands of extra homes going on arable land that didn’t need to. Here we are 5 years on and RSP have not engaged at all officially with TDC to meet the requirements of the DCO, nor have they done anything with their CAA application for two years and they have had not had contact with the MOD since the DCO examination period to find a suitable site to relocate the HRDF. All these are requirements of the DCO before RSP can start work so as far as I can see the Tories have squandered prime farmland for absolutely nothing
Well said Ian.
Don’t expect the usual suspects on here to understand or accept the reality though…