Here for Hereford supporters from North, West and South Hereford gathered at Breinton Village Hall on 21st January to discuss the Council’s benighted Local Development Framework (LDF). Already two years behind schedule, people want to know ‘What’s happening with the LDF?’
The LDF is, put simply, a Local Plan. It includes the Local Transport Plan (LTP). It will set the direction of Herefordshire for the next twenty years. It identifies locations for future housing, employment and other developments in Hereford City, the Market Towns, and some Rural Areas. It includes options for sustainable transport measures, and a possible relief road for Hereford.
The Localism Act, the National Planning Policy Framework and the unpopularity of the relief road in the Local Plan proposals provided the basis for discussion at Breinton’s Village Hall. The essence of the new planning regime is to give local communities more say in their Local Plans. The essence of local residents’ opposition to the proposed relief road is that it does not serve the needs of the local community. It does nothing to promote the economic, social and environmental well-being of the people who live and work alongside the proposed inner western relief road route, from Grafton in the south, to King’s Acre and Stretton Sugwas in the north. It will do almost nothing to assist the sustainable development of Hereford City itself.
The Council’s Local Plan will be voted on in Council this July. Before then, its draft content will be subject to Overview and Scrutiny, some time in March, and endorsed by Cabinet, presumably in June, although it is difficult to get any of this timetable clarified by anyone. A major concern, expressed at the meeting, is that Council officers seem to be able to call the shots at the moment in their haste to meet the July deadline, without keeping all elected Councillors fully informed.
Council officers have also been wary of releasing the results of the most recent consultation on the ‘Revised Preferred Options for Hereford’ in the Local Plan. This was the consultation in which Here for Hereford played a major part. It finished at the end of November 2011, and there is confusion over how the Council will study the responses and whether and in what form they will be published.
The good news is that Council officers have agreed that Here for Hereford supporters can study the responses in a room made available to them in Council offices. Contact the secretary at Here for Hereford, vickiweggprosser@gmail.com if you would like to help in this research exercise. The results will be published in time for Overview and Scrutiny.
Herefordshire’s Local Plan (2011-31) has to be endorsed by the Planning Inspectorate before it has any chance of being implemented. There is still time for the relief road proposals to be dropped, either by their being removed from the Plan before the Council vote in July, or by being removed from the Plan by the Planning Inspectorate itself, in order for the Plan to be deemed ‘sound’. At the moment, all the indications are that the Relief Road proposals are, in planning terms, ‘unsound’. As the Planning Inspectorate put it in March 2012: ‘a Plan B needs to be available that shows the extent of growth which will be possible without the road’.
The Council would be well advised to remove the relief road proposal from its Local Plan now. They should offer an alternative ‘Plan B’ based less on ambition and more on realism in these straitened economic times.
