A campaign group dedicated to protecting the countryside has launched a withering attack on the joint local plan process in the South Hams which it has condemned as a “developer’s charter”.
The Campaign to Protect of Rural England claims that consultation over the planning blueprint for the future has been reduced to an expensive PR exercise which has left members of the public frustrated and outraged.
Meanwhile, district council representatives have been accused of “patronising arrogance”.
CPRE South Hams chairman Justin Haque claims figures used to justify the number of homes needs in the region are “sensationally wrong” and points to the 504 homes earmarked for Dartington alone, which the parish has been told it will get whether its wants them or not.
The CPRE South Hams recently held a meeting in Dartington attended by more than 60 people to try to draw together the campaign experience of various groups in an attempt to fight off unwanted development in their areas.
Following on from that meeting, Mr Haque and Dr Katy Brown from the CPRE South hams have both issued a statement declaring: “The only way to accurately describe the JLP consultation is an expensive PR exercise, or put more simply, a ‘faux consultation’.
“In the South Hams alone, both the meetings that we have hosted as the CPRE and those held by the parish councils have illustrated that the public’s sense of frustration and outrage is only matched by the corresponding display of patronising arrogance of the council’s representatives.
“For example, at the recent Green Park Way, Chillington, council hearing, which approved the building of 65 new houses, residents witnessed the council’s water consultant argue that run-off water would travel upwards against gravity to deny the real flooding concerns of Chillington and Frogmore.
“At Stokenham, the council’s favoured sea view site to develop is Care Cross Green, which has been bitterly opposed by the parish council and the local community.
“An alternative site has been submitted on Holbrook Terrace which benefits from better highway access and, more importantly, the support of the local neighbourhood. However, the council’s consultant has not even visited the alternative site with it being utterly dismissed by his own statutory consultants.
“On the majority of local matters, the JLP planners rely only on council’s statutory consultants, as opposed to local opinion or experience.
“The 504 houses allocated to Dartington illustrates the council is laser focused on big numbers in order to receive its New Homes Bonus payment.
“This is further illustrated by 23 inappropriate housing applications being considered in the AONB.
“The examples are endless, with the council targeting and approving building regardless of local opinion or demand.
“It also makes a mockery of the Localism Act of 2011 and shows how this JLP ‘consultation’ is quite meaningless.
“The broader question that the JLP fails to answer is the flawed methodology for calculating housing demand. The council falls back on Office of National Statistics projections but these figures for the last five years have been sensationally wrong.
“The ONS overestimated housing demand in the south west by 23 per cent and underestimated demand in the south east by 63 per cent, yet at no stage does our council challenge these erroneous calculations.
“Similarly, the JLP targets 3,000 houses in excess of the central government target but there is no plan or provision for new doctor’s surgeries, schools or road infrastructure – a point made more poignant by the closing of Dartmouth Hospital.
“In summary, the veneer of a JLP public consultation in combination with the changes to the local planning guidelines will now render the National Planning Policy Framework simply as a ‘developer’s charter’.
“For the most part, we, the public, are ignored by our national and local politicians.”