2:20pm Tuesday 1st June 2010
Controversial plans which raised the spectre of Green Belt land around Redhill and Reigate being concreted over for new housing estates look to have been killed off.
The Government has written to councils around the country, including Reigate and Banstead Borough Council, to say it is scrapping regional housing strategies.
Communities secretary Eric Pickles has said the borough council does not have to wait for legislation but now has the power to make its own planning decisions and protect the Green Belt.
The news has been welcomed by the borough council.
It was one of a very few which won its battle to get its future housing allocation lowered in the last Government's South East Plan Regional Spatial Strategy (SEP), which would have informed future planning policies and applications until 2026.
The housing total was reduced by more than 1,200 properties from 11,240 to 10,000 homes, and the council said it could accommodate the new homes without building on the Green Belt.
But one policy of the SEP which remained continued to put the case for a small-scale local review of the Green Belt around Reigate and Redhill, stating it was likely to be required and should be pursued through the local development framework.
Now though, with the new Government in power, that threat to the local Green Belt looks to have been killed off, lifting the question mark of further development, planning blight and loss of green space from over the heads of hundreds of residents.
Mike Miller, borough council executive member for planning, transport and housing, said: “We welcome the new Government’s statement yesterday about its commitment to protect the Green Belt. “That strongly supports this council’s approach.”
He said: “We want to steer development to our growth and regeneration areas through our Local Development Framework.
“The council has always maintained that it could accommodate the housing growth allocations set out in the SEP without eating into the Green Belt.”
Coun Miller added: “The SEP housing target to 2026 is 10,000. “The Secretary of State has now, in effect, announced that such regional plans will be abolished through new legislation announced in the Queen’s Speech. “However, as yet he has given no details of how councils will determine their housing requirements in future.”
He said: “It’s always been important to this council to plan and manage development to meet local objectives, so we will continue our work to assess where growth will be needed in future.” Coun Miller pointed out that while the SEP did not identify any specific areas for Green Belt review or major development, it did say that if the council could not meet its housing target elsewhere, it might have to consider a Green Belt review around Redhill and Reigate.
“Having said that, developers may make planning applications anywhere at any time, including in the Green Belt,” he said. “We have always had these but we have an excellent track record of defending our Green Belt against development because we have made adequate provision elsewhere.” Many towns and areas around the UK had been planning to make Green Belt cuts and reviews because of Whitehall-imposed targets, including Guildford Borough Council, which last week won its legal challenge to the SEP, supported by Surrey County Council.
Surrey County Council leader Dr Andrew Povey said: “We are delighted with this victory. We don’t need diktats on home building and I’m hugely confident the new Government will see the error of the previous one’s ways.
“Providing more homes should not happen if it means concreting over vast parts of our countryside or failing to put the infrastructure in place to support them.”
The county council backed Guildford’s decision to seek a judicial review on the grounds that the Government had not considered an alternative to building on the Green Belt in the town. Clive Smith, planning advisor to the Surrey Hills Board, said: “Governments and Surrey planning authorities have always strongly supported the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). “The new Government's decision should remove any doubt that any housing allocations will be met in the AONB or the Area of Great Landscape Value (AGLV) in Surrey.” Referring to Tandridge and Mole Valley District Councils, he said: “Some councils in Surrey have already progressed plans relating to meeting their top-down imposed housing targets that would involve reviewing their Green Belt boundaries. “I would expect them now to reconsider those plans.” Mr Smith said the Surrey Hills AONB should never really have been under threat but there were doubts over the strength of planning policies for the AGLV, which he said has similar characteristics to the AONB. He added while the SEP is to be abolished, the Government has said it will be publishing financial incentives for councils to make sufficient provision for housing in their areas. He said there could be tensions ahead within some authorities as to whether the environment in their localities outweighed the incentives being offered.
Reigate and Banstead Borough Council had attacked the previous Government's housing proposals put forward in the SEP.
At one point, the Leader of the Council, Joan Spiers, branded the SEP allocation of housing in the borough "astonishing."
With the last Government also specifying that Green Belt reviews may have been needed, Reigate MP Crispin Blunt said he was “personally committed to the Green Belt” and said he would “die in a ditch to stop new development on Green Belt land."
Former East Surrey MP Peter Ainsworth also said the Green Belt had his “resolute support.”
But now, as promised, the new Government has announced “Regional Strategies will soon be history.”
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said: “The previous Government gave a green light for the destruction of the Green Belt across the country and we are determined to stop it.”
He said: “We’ve promised to use legislation to scrap top-down building targets that are eating up the Green Belt, but I’m not going to make communities wait any longer to start making decisions for themselves.
“That’s why I have written to all councils to let them know from today they can make planning decisions in the knowledge Regional Strategies will soon be history.”
He said: “It will no longer be possible to concrete over large swathes of the country without any regard to what local people want.
“From now on communities will be trusted to make the right decisions about what development is suitable for their area, not bossed around by central Government and unelected regional quangos.
“Previously people from Bournemouth to Bromsgrove had to stand by and accept bureaucrats knew best.
“The new approach will allow local communities to control the way in which villages, towns and cities develop and they will be the ones who enjoy the benefits from the proceeds of growth.”
A spokesman for the Communities and Local Government Office said: “While the current system of housing targets imposed from Whitehall in theory gives councils control over where houses are built, in reality it has forced them to redraw the lines of the Green Belt, and designate large areas of countryside where new development will go over the next 20 years.
“The new Government has committed to protect the Green Belt from any encroachment that communities have fought long and hard against, and give councils and communities the freedom to decide where new development will go.”
The Government's coalition agreement has set out a commitment to rapidly abolish Regional Strategies and their centrally imposed building targets.
The Government announced in the Queen’s Speech that they will introduce legislation to do it, but ahead of this, Eric Pickles has written to councils to explain they now have the freedom to regard the commitment to end regional plans and housing targets as a material planning consideration in any decisions they are currently making on building in their area.
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