Controversy over the recently adopted Guildford local plan is mounting after three judicial review applications were submitted and a local MP renewed his calls for the document to be subject to an early review.
Law firm Richard Buxton Solicitors has lodged judicial review applications with the High Court on behalf of two parish councils and an individual, seeking to challenge the local plan’s adoption.
Compton Parish Council, Ockham Parish Council and Julian Cranwell claim the council has “misinterpreted the meaning of exceptional circumstances in removing land from the green belt for housing”.
Guildford Borough Council adopted the plan in April this year after a 16 month examination process which involved extensive negotiations between the authority and planning inspector Jonathan Bore about the level of housing provision and green belt release required.
The adopted plan includes an objectively assessed need figure of 562 homes a year, or 10,678 homes over the plan period, but allocates sites for the development of 14,602 homes.
Green belt site allocations include 2,000 homes on 96 hectares at the former Wisley airfield, 1,700 homes on 89 hectares at Gosden Hill Farm, and 1,500 homes on 78 hectares at Blackwell Farm.
Cranwell is seeking to challenge the overall level of housing allocations while Ockham Parish Council and Compton Parish Council are objecting to respective site allocations at Wisley airfield and Blackwell Farm.
Meanwhile, a Surrey MP has backed down over recent claims that the Guildford local plan could be revised without consultation or examination, but has called on the authority to conduct a review of green belt allocations.
Sir Paul Beresford, the Conservative MP for Mole Valley, wrote to Guildford councillors last month to condemn the plan’s adoption during the purdah period before local elections and to call for the reversal of a decision to allocate green belt sites in his constituency for housing.
The MP said he had been assured by the government that the plan could be amended “without consultation or referral to the secretary of state”.
“I have sought, and received, verbal assurances from the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government that GBC can bring about a reversal of this with a ‘local plan revision’,” he wrote. “A motion to full council may be sufficient.”
However, a spokesman for MHCLG told Planning: “Plan updates and changes to green belt boundaries will be subject to proper process, including public consultation and independent examination.”
Beresford has since said that he asked Guildford Borough Council to conduct a “very short review” but said his letter had “stirred up a bit of a hornet’s nest” amid other challenges to the plan.
“As a consequence of that I have slightly changed my approach and pointed out they have to review their local plan every five years but they can review it from day one,” he said. “I’m asking them to review certain aspects of it now.”
Beresford said he would be writing to councillors to clarify his request and urge any review to take place “promptly”. He added: “If we don’t do that we’re going to end up with some of the green belt land with applications before the current plan is reviewed. That could be disastrous.”
Guildford Borough Council’s newly appointed Lib Dem leader Caroline Reeves said: “Whilst the council may consider a review of the local plan in the future, it is important that we have a local plan in place to enable us to deliver sites and bring forward much needed policies to guide and deliver quality design, infrastructure and sustainability, ensuring that any development is of the highest standard.”
This article originally appeared on Planning Resource (Paid subscription)
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