My response to the Local Plan

Reg 18 Consultation due to close

Basildon Council's new Draft Local Plan proposes 27,000 new homes 

Everyone recognises that Basildon Borough Council must positively prepare a Local Plan. It does, however, need to be the right plan – one that meets the aspirations of local people and allows our communities to grow, whilst ensuring new developments are supported by adequate infrastructure and maintains the quality of life of existing residents.

No-one will get any argument from me that we need more homes to accommodate our growing population. Even more importantly, we need homes that are affordable. As a 42-year-old man with a young family still living in rented accommodation, I am acutely aware of the frustrated aspirations of multiple generations of people in this country, for whom the dream of homeownership seems increasingly unattainable. I do not want my son to grow up in a world where only his grandparents own their own home. I am far from a ‘NIMBY’.   

 

Indeed, most people I speak to in Billericay readily accept the need for housing. They recognise that this is a plan for the next 20 years, and are pragmatic that in a borough like ours, within the Metropolitan Green Belt, releasing some land for development may be justifiable, particularly if it is not fully meeting Green Belt policy objectives. Their concern, which I share, is that we ought to minimise the loss of irreplaceable Green Belt by robustly maximising the potential of brownfield sites. They are also not stupid. They see the Labour Government’s ‘Grey Belt’ chicanery for the intentionally subjective wooliness it is. We have already seen how this slight-of-hand policy will be used against us with the recent Laindon Road planning application, passed just this week, with Green Belt land downgraded as 'Grey Belt'. 
Crucially, what people understand is that none of this works unless we plan for the right number of homes.  

"Mrs Rayner has said 'Jump', and Gavin Callaghan and his colleagues have clicked their heels and said, 'How high?'" 

In this sense, the whole starting point of the emerging Draft Local Plan, upon which the Council is about to conclude its Regulation 18 consultation, is fundamentally wrong. We need more homes, but we simply do not need anything like as many as the 27,000-plus homes this new plan proposes. This number derives from our ‘Objectively Assessed Need’, as calculated using the ‘Standard Methodology’ outlined in the National Planning Policy Framework, recently amended under the auspices of the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, who is also Secretary of State for Housing & Local Government. Mrs Rayner's feckless algorithm is both deaf and blind to the sustainability of our existing communities, and pumps out an unjustified housing target several orders of magnitude beyond actual local need. The target being imposed on us by the Labour Government is not remotely sustainable, and legitimate local constraints like Green Belt are simply dismissed.

The 27K homes proposed in the emerging Draft Local Plan would represent a 30% increase in the Borough’s population – potentially around 65,000 new residents. This is the equivalent of building Billericay and Wickford again. The Billericay Action Group have looked at credible data from the Office of National Statistics, and they have concluded that this is 3 or 4 times greater than realistic local housing need. Of these, approx. 17,000 will need to be built in our Green Belt – over 5,000 of them in and around Billericay. Much of this land is productive farmland – vital to our future food security.
It is clear to me that the current Labour Administration in Basildon has no intention of pushing back against these high numbers or taking on their own government, as the previous Conservative Administration intended to do. Mrs Rayner has said 'Jump', and Gavin Callaghan and his colleagues have clicked their heels and said, 'How high?' Councillor Callaghan and his Labour colleagues speak disingenuously about the 14,000 people on the Council’s housing waiting list, and the 11,000 24 to 35-year-olds who are still living at home, implying these new homes are needed for them. 

"Most ‘affordable housing’ is for rent at 80% of private rental levels, while 30% is for shared ownership (part purchase), which still requires a good, typically above average, income." 

The reality is that few of them will be able to afford a new-build house in this borough. If they could, they would not be applying for social housing. Not one of these 27K homes will be a Council house. Considering that a large proportion of this housing will be high-end, it is clear the excessive number is to support inward migration, not our own people. We all know that so-called ‘affordable housing’ is a misnomer. Most ‘affordable housing’ is for rent at 80% of private rental levels, while 30% is for shared ownership (part purchase), which still requires a good, typically above average, income. We already know that many people in this borough cannot afford rents any higher that 60% market rate, so even the ‘affordable housing’ is unaffordable to them.

Specific impact on Billericay East

Specific sites of concern to me as a ward councillor are Policy IF1 for limited infill of the Break Egg Hill plotlands area, which borders the Norsey Wood Site of Special Scientific Interest. This will harm the wildlife there. The policy map, however, reveals that the site is also far bigger than the existing plotlands. Policy H1 for 1,500 homes homes on Greens Farm Lane, adjacent to Beverley Rise, The Rising and Morris Avenue to the east, with more at the junction with Outwood Common Road at Snails Hall Farm. Between the two sites there is to be a proposed extension of the Mill Meadows Nature Reserve, which I broadly welcome. I know the Mill Meadows Society and others have been working with the developer to this aim for some time. Nonetheless, Mill Meadows is largely an ‘island’ surrounded by development on most sides. The Greens Farm Lane side is currently the largest open aspect, affording a critical wildlife corridor to the meadows. Maintaining this corridor through the proposed extension is crucial, as the developments either side would effectively close off much of the current openness. I remain concerned about the reclassification of the extension as ‘strategic open space’. The amount of land that will be afforded for this purpose is now decidedly hazy. It feels to me like one of the few community benefits outlined in any of the policy areas has been quietly downgraded.  

Policy AS2 (alternative site), off Potash Road, is also in my ward and an application for a development here was only relatively recently rejected by the Planning Inspectorate. In dismissing the appeal, the Inspector made it clear the rationale for a development here was unsound. Its inclusion in the Draft Local Plan is, therefore, baffling.
The 2023 Green Belt Study

Meanwhile, a new Green Belt Study has been introduced into the Evidence Base. Their report is an outrage. Central Government were clear the old review carried out in 2017 was sound - and based on actual site visits. Yet the Council has replaced it with an inferior desktop study, with no site visits, and which employs several contrivances to justify excessive Green Belt release. The Basildon Green Belt Study Final Report 2023 concludes, absurdly, that Billericay is not a ‘Large Built-Up Area’ under Green Belt Purpose 1 (checking urban sprawl), despite similar sized neighbouring towns like Brentwood, Rayleigh, Rochford and Shenfield all qualifying under Purpose 1. The Report also concludes that the Green Belt around Billericay “is not considered to contribute to the Setting or Special Character of the Town”. This justifies their conclusion that no harm will result from releasing land under Purpose 4 (to preserve the setting and special character of historic towns).

Anyone with a brain in their head can see that being set in the heart of Green Belt is central to Billericay’s historic setting and special character. How could it not be? Where do they find the halfwitted dullards that write this drivel?

Crucially, no land in the Borough is assessed as meeting Purpose 5 (to assist in urban regeneration), despite similar reports for Rochford District Council and Southend-on-Sea City Council, undertaken by the same consultancy, concluding “all Green Belt land is considered to make a strong contribution to Purpose 5”. All Green Belt, apart, it seems, from the Green Belt surrounding Billericay.

"'...[A]ll Green Belt land is considered to make a strong contribution to Purpose 5'. All Green Belt, apart, it seems, from the Green Belt surrounding Billericay."

Ultimately, Billericay’s Green Belt is only assessed against two of the five Purposes in the latest Report, which seriously disadvantages our town. It also represents, in just 6 short years, a near-total reversal of the findings of the 2017 Green Belt Study, with land assessed as high value, being found to have almost no value at all. I have been unable to find any other local authority in this position. Every other one I have looked at is having their Green Belt assessed against at least four of the five. This would appear to be inconsistent and drastically unsound.

No more Infrastructure First

There is also scant information in the Draft Local Plan regarding provision of infrastructure and services to support these proposed developments and the people who will live in them. The infrastructure in and around Billericay is already creaking at the seams and is little better elsewhere in the Borough.

We are already struggling to meet the needs of existing residents. Our schools and healthcare facilities are oversubscribed, our highway network is crumbling. These services are unlikely to cope with this scale of housebuilding without significant investment and delivery of infrastructure first. Instead, this plan caters for infrastructure provision ‘at the point of need’, meaning only once a development has been built and has people living in it may we possibly get some infrastructure (assuming developers do not find some cunning artifice by which to wriggle out of their Section 106 responsibilities in the intervening period).

What infrastructure does come, will come in dribs and drabs and far too late. New schools, hospitals, doctors’ surgeries, libraries, highways upgrades, etc., all take years to build. By the time they arrive, if they arrive, entire generations of residents will have been failed and the quality of life of existing residents ruined. It took nearly 10 years to deliver the new school to support the development that was built on the Dry Street pastures in Basildon. That is an entire generation of failed young people, who had to commute to schools elsewhere. 

Affordability

Fundamentally, the current housing crisis is an affordability crisis. Yet there is no evidence that simply building thousands more homes will do anything to make them more affordable. Most sensible economists agree that high prices and high rents are here to stay, irrespective of local plans. We all know there is little real incentive for anyone to reduce house prices. The Government, business, existing homeowners, none of them really want to see house prices fall, least of all developers. The only people who really want prices to fall are those looking to buy. Everyone else has a vested interest in keeping prices where they are and they will do nothing to jeopardise that.

The real issue is wages, which have fallen so far out of step with house prices and rent costs. This plan does nothing to close that gap. It is simply a developers’ charter. They have lobbied, and land-banked, and sat on extant permissions, refusing to build them out. This has impacted the Council’s housing land supply and delivery targets, fuelling pressure to release Green Belt (which is cheaper to develop and more profitable for developers). They have played the system like a fiddle, and we continue to dance to their tune.  

Conclusion

This consultation has been hopelessly inadequate. Despite being critical to the future of the entire borough, impacting every resident, the Council has pursued the laziest communications strategy conceivable. If you work for a living or are not on the Internet, there is a good chance you know nothing about this consultation. You will certainly have struggled to take part in it. The Council has relied exclusively on digital channels – mostly Facebook. I have seen few physical materials or notices. The barriers faced by the elderly or otherwise digitally excluded are considerable. The Council was sluggish in providing paper documents in the libraries. We were a third of the way through this consultation before a copy was provided in Billericay Library (only one copy available and kept behind the front desk, viewable only on request). No copy was provided even to Billericay Town Council.

A live event was held at the Chantry Centre with only 4 days’ notice. Even ward councillors were not informed in advance. The event was poorly attended and badly managed. An online ‘webinar’ was similarly poorly advertised. The Council has treated residents with barely concealed disinterest, bordering on contempt. Nobody seems interested in even pretending they care what residents think. The whole thing feels like a box-ticking exercise.  
Nevertheless, I strongly urge anyone who has not yet done so, to respond to the consultation before it closes on Sunday (January 12th).

 
Have Your Say Today - Basildon Local Plan - Commonplace

Labour's Draft Local Plan does nothing to benefit local people in Basildon Borough. If this plan is adopted, the housing ladder will remain as out of reach to us as it is today and will only exacerbate the other problems our communities face by overwhelming their local services. This is a plan to pointlessly sacrifice large swathes of the irreplaceable Green Belt that keeps our historic towns and villages separate and distinct. It will result in the coalescence of Billericay and many of its surrounding villages and lead to urban sprawl. More generally, it will turn Basildon, Billericay and Wickford into one giant overbuilt conurbation, with overwhelmed infrastructure.

We need a good Local Plan. This is a bad Local Plan. I will not support it and will vote against it at every opportunity.