On Thursday 27 July 2023, the Tandridge Local Plan Inspector, Philip Lewis, held a procedural meeting with council officers. The primary aim of the meeting was to discuss the council’s proposed steps for progressing the Local Plan.
A Local Plan sets out where development will go in the future and is used by the council to decide planning applications going forward. All planning authorities are required to produce one. Targets for the amount of development are set nationally by the Government.
The Tandridge Local Plan was submitted for examination in January 2019 by the previous Conservative council administration and was not of our making. It ran into difficulties, with the Planning Inspector expressing serious concerns about it, in particular regarding the delivery of the proposed South Godstone garden community and the capacity of junction 6 of the M25.
The council is now putting forward amendments to the Plan which include deleting the garden community. We very much hope the Inspector will accept this way forward because it has always been OLRG's concern that, without an up to date Plan, all of the District’s Green Belt (and it is 94% Green Belt) would be at risk from constant, unsuitable planning applications, some of which may get through at appeal.
In an attempt to avoid that, and the appalling waste of taxpayers’ money if the Plan is lost (£3.5m), the council has worked hard on this new proposal. We have inherited the troubled 2019 Plan and have repeatedly tried to find a way forward in the context of continuing uncertainty over the Government’s proposed changes to planning rules and severe financial constraints resulting from the council facing a possible bankruptcy notice in 2021.
We believe what was put before the Inspector at the July meeting is a pragmatic solution..
The Inspector’s meeting can be watched here: click here
For more information about the Local Plan click here
