At the special Council meeting on 6 June our councillors will be asked to vote on a motion to ‘pause’ the Local Plan process.
Staines Town Society, along with several other residents’ groups across the borough, have asked councillors to refuse this pause.
The claimed reason is to give new councillors time to understand the Plan. But the Inspector’s report will not arrive until October at the earliest: it is unnecessary, and rather insulting to new councillors, to suggest that they will not have mastered it by then.
Any delay in the Plan process is dangerous. Planning applications can only be refused if they are contrary to Local Plan policies, but the existing Plan is out of date and can no longer protect us from unsuitable development like the 15 storey tower blocks about to rise on the Masonic Hall site in Thames Street Staines. We will remain vulnerable until we have a new approved Local Plan.
We fear that certain councillors want not just to delay the Plan but to change it, on the grounds that ‘nobody likes it’. There is some truth in this, as the new Plan is a very carefully worked out compromise between what Spelthorne people want and what the Government insists on in planning law, the National Planning Policy Framework. If SBC submits a Plan that we would prefer, with less housing, the Inspector will simply refuse it, as he must uphold planning law. There will then be further long delay for discussion until SBC finally gives in and produces an acceptable plan. Other local authorities have suffered delays of a year or more. And for all this time our towns and our Green Belt will be unprotected.
Yes, with the new Plan there will be more development than Spelthorne can easily absorb BUT without it there will be much more.
Therefore we ask councillors – please do not delay the plan.
Our latest newsletter, has a section on reasons for supporting the Plan, which, may be of interest.
Staines Town Society committee.
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