08:08 Wednesday 15th July 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
DOTTY MCLEOD: East Cambridgeshire District Council could launch a review of its Local Plan just two months after it was adopted. Any review would cost up to £145,000 over three years, and see a new wave of public consultations. The Local Plan, we’ve spoken about them so much. You might remember what they are, but just in case, it’s a plan for the future development of a local area. So it decides whether or not any planning applications that are submitted can be given the go-ahead. A report is going to be seen by East Cambridgeshire District Council this week. It says the decision of a Government Inspector to override a planning refusal for 120 homes in Witchford has led to the possibility of a review. In allowing the national developers plans, the Inspector said housing supply plans in East Cambridgeshire were already out of date. Richard Kay handles forward planning on East Cambridgeshire District Council, and we will talk to Richard in just a moment, but first let’s have a word with Sebastian Kindersley, who is the South Cambridgeshire District councillor for Gamlingay, because these kinds of cases have occurred in South Cambridgeshire as well, haven’t they Sebastian?
SEBASTIAN KINDERSLEY: Yes good morning Dotty. I’m afraid it has, almost exactly, where a planning inspector has agreed a number of appeals in Waterbeach in March. And the result of that has been an absolute flood of speculative planning applications from pre-application enquiries, which is rapidly transforming South Cambs. in a way that is unplanned, and actually frankly at the moment unwanted.
DOTTY MCLEOD: And these applications, these speculative applications as you are calling them, they hinge on what?
Continue reading “Inspector calls Local Plan into question”