To receive a verbal update by the Head of Planning Services.
Minutes:
(Councillor P L E Bucknell, Executive Councillor for Planning Strategy was in attendance for this Item).
The Chairman welcomed the Executive Councillor for Planning Strategy and Transportation, together with the Head of Planning Services who had been invited to the meeting to discuss the Regional Scale Settlement Study which had been published recently by the East of England Regional Assembly.
Members were advised that a review of the 2008 East of England Plan which set out growth targets for 2000 to 2021 was being undertaken by the East of England Regional Assembly (EERA) which would forecast the growth required in the region to 2031. As part of the review, EERA had commissioned independent consultants who had now published their Regional Scale Settlement Study which had analysed various potential levels of future growth suggested by the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit. The study had identified potential locations for regional scale growth and regional scale new settlements within the East of England. The consultants had proposed three inter-related strands of growth – continued large scale growth in Cambridge, Norwich and Chelmsford, additional regional scale growth in Ipswich, Colchester and Bury St Edmunds and potential regional scale growth in a number of new growth locations, the strongest of which options were identified as Braintree and Huntingdon / Alconbury. Members were informed that the latter would comprise a minimum of 20,000 new homes.
In discussing the content of the study, the Panel noted concerns in relation to the timing of the study, its overall robustness and its lack of analysis and justification for the preferred locations. The County Council, in partnership with the district councils in the County had commissioned consultants to prepare a Cambridgeshire Development Study to establish the sustainability of different levels of growth and the Head of Planning Services added that the District Council also would be commissioning its own independent consultants to inform the Council’s response to the proposals and evidence at the subsequent Examination in Public of the Regional Plan proposals.
The Head of Planning Services pointed out that the Regional Scale Settlement Study had itself queried whether the sub region of Cambridge and Peterborough should or physically could accommodate growth over and above that contained in the existing Regional Spatial Strategy. He suggested that growth on the scale envisaged at Huntingdon/Alconbury would not be sustainable and that there was concern generally at the scale of growth being proposed by the Government in the current economic climate.
Members acknowledged that a development of the size identified at Huntingdon/Alconbury would alter significantly the character of the District and would further exacerbate the imbalance between housing growth and a shortfall in local employment which had led to out-commuting from the District and congestion on both road and rail links.
The Panel therefore agreed in principle with proposals to rebut strongly the findings of the EERA study and a need for the Council to invest in commissioning its own consultants to provide evidence for the response.
RESOLVED
that the Executive Councillor for Planning and Transportation and the Head of Planning Services be requested to attend a future meeting of the Panel to report on the outcome of the Cambridgeshire Development Study and the District Council's response to the Regional Scale Settlement Study.