Reg 18 Consultation now open
The latest and possibly last chapter in the long-running saga of Basildon's Local Plan is about to commence.
At a meeting of Full Council last week, Basildon borough councillors voted in favour of putting the new Draft Local Plan out to the Regulation 18 public consultation. This was voted for by the Labour Group and their 'Independent' backers in Basildon and Wickford. Basildon Conservatives voted against. We are not against a public consultation, obviously, but we refuse to even tacitly endorse what is a terrible plan - far worse than the plan we voted to withdraw in 2022.
Even the Labour Cabinet Member for Planning & Infrastructure, Cllr. Adele Brown (Lab, Fryerns) admitted in her speech, voting for the Reg 18 makes it "our plan" and, as I told her at the meeting, it's certainly not my plan. I don't want her rotten plan and nor do my constituents! "...It's certainly not my plan. I don't want her rotten plan and nor do my constituents!"
Ultimately, the difference between Conservative councillors and Labour/Indies, is quite simple. We have been prepared to fight against inflated housing targets being imposed on us by Central Government - even when that meant taking the fight to our own party in Westminster. The Labour Group are not prepared to have that fight with their government. The arguments from Cllrs. Gavin Callaghan (Lab, St. Martin's), Kerry Smith (Ind, Nethermayne) and David Harrison (W/Ind, Wickford Park) were, in essence, 'If we don't accept it, Westminster will intervene to impose it on us'. They have thrown in the towel, and want all of us to roll over and have our tummies tickled. Well, I voted to tell Angela Rayner to get knotted!
As I said in the meeting, Councillor Brown and I served together for many years on the Planning Committee, so I know she has always been a true believer in the mantra that we need to 'Build! Build! Build!', in the misguided belief that if we just pass a developers' charter and let them flood the Borough with new homes, this will somehow bring down property prices and boost affordability. If I thought that was on the cards, I might be tempted to vote for it myself. There is a housing crisis, and it is largely an affordability crisis. But there is no evidence to support the contention that simply granting permission for more homes (mostly in the irreplaceable Green Belt) will bring down house prices. The developers will never allow that to happen. They are already sitting on scores of extant planning permissions Basildon Council has granted them, yet they refuse to build them out. Why? Because they want to maintain high prices, increase their profits, and continue to put pressure on Local Planning Authorities like Basildon to release Green Belt land in local plans, because it is cheaper to develop and means increased profits for them.
Nobody will get any disagreement from me that we need more homes. After 3 years as Cabinet Member for Housing, I am well aware of the acute need for more homes. I actually built a few myself! We just do not need anything like as many as the 27,000 this Draft Local Plan proposes. We certainly do not need to despoil hundreds of hectares of Green Belt to build them. Apart from anything else, this plan will not deliver the type of housing we need most urgently, which is council housing. Instead, it will allow developers to churn up the green fields of Billericay and Wickford to build posh executive homes nobody who lives here can afford, and cram our town centres in Basildon, Laindon and Pitsea with high-rise rabbit hutches nobody in their right mind wants to live in.
"There is a housing crisis, and it is largely an affordability crisis. But there is no evidence to support the contention that simply granting permission for more homes (mostly in the irreplaceable Green Belt) will bring down house prices."
Fundamentally, Basildon Conservatives voted to withdraw the old Submission Local Plan because we rejected the then Government's faulty logic, and their soulless one-size-fits-all algorithm. We sought independent advice from legal counsel on whether we could withdraw the plan and were told that we could. Given the clear steer councillors were getting from their constituents, and the mood music coming out of Central Government in respect of planning reform, Conservative councillors felt emboldened and resolved to fight against the scale of Green Belt loss we felt was being imposed upon us. The current Administration, sadly, are not interested in that fight.
Planning became an increasingly vexed question towards the end of the last Government, and with good reasons. I served on the Planning Committee, on and off, for about 7 years. I can think of few things in this country more entirely broken than our wholly dysfunctional planning system. There are a myriad of ways in which it simply does not work. The whole Local Plan preparation process is just one of them.
The starting point is an 'Objectively Assessed Need' (OAN) - a number, conjured as part of some faceless calculation based on a 'Standard Methodology'. It results in a housing target several orders of magnitude beyond actual local need. The latest Draft Local Plan calls for more than 27,000 new homes to be built over the next 20 years, approximately 17,000 of them in the Green Belt. It amounts to building a whole new town the size of Billericay and Wickford combined.
"I can think of few things in this country more entirely broken than our wholly dysfunctional planning system."
I believe this plan is unsound, undeliverable and unsustainable. The way in which necessary infrastructure to mitigate the impact of all these developments is to be delivered is yet another area in which current planning processes fail us. Section 106 agreements - which identify 'commuted sums' developers must pay towards provision of infrastructure - are manifestly inadequate. The s.106 requirements do not kick in until a development is already built and people start to move into it - assuming developers do not find some cunning device by which to wriggle out of their responsibilities in the meantime. What little infrastructure is delivered, comes in dribs and drabs and far too late.
But the die is now cast and battle must be joined. The Reg 18 is now open (link below). Residents have until January 12th, 2025 to submit comments. Although I voted against putting this plan to consultation, because I think it is a bad plan, this is what the Administration is presenting to you. I urge all residents to take the opportunity to have your say and give your views. Please share the consultation with family, friends and neighbours. We need a bumper response from Billericay to ensure this town's voice is heard loud and clear, not just at the Basildon Centre but in the halls of the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol!
Have Your Say Today - Basildon Local Plan - Commonplace
This is a bad plan, not just for Billericay but for the whole Borough. Even if you do not have a proposed development site near you, you will be affected. This plan will determine the future of this Borough for the next 20 years. As things stand, it could be a future marked by buckling infrastructure, pressure on schools, pressure on GP services, dentists, roads, the railways, parking, our whole quality of life. Nothing will be left untouched by this scale of growth. This is not our first rodeo, folks, and I know we are all tired of the poxy Local Plan and these interminable consultations, but now is not the time to let up.
The Battle for the Green Belt is now at hand. So it begins...
