Lib Dems slam Tories over four-year Planning delays

6.00.00pm GMT Tue 22nd Mar 2005

Flashback. Local Focus on Danbury. The rest of the Borough is also blighted by lack of Tory direction.

The Conservatives running Chelmsford Borough Council have been attacked for leaving the Borough in planning limbo for possibly as much as four years, and for not 'coming clean' on where the new houses will go. A report to a council meeting in February said that the new-style local development plan might not be adopted until Spring 2008!

This will be nearly five years after the Conservatives withdrew the previous draft plan, drawn up by the then Liberal Democrat run Council. Now they are consulting Borough residents about the principles for the new plan. This does not include any firm proposals for housing allocations.

Since 2003, a Policy Panel - meeting in secret - has been working on the new Plan, now called a "Local Development Framework". The plan period has been extended to 2021 from 2011 and the numbers of new houses allocated to the Borough substantially increased.

Said Borough Lib Dem Leader Cllr Phil Harvey

"In 2003, the Conservative and Labour groups scrapped our draft Borough Plan, saying that the delay on announcing housing allocations would only be a few months. This week local people learn that, far from being told in detail where all the new houses are to be located, there is only a reference to "north and east of Chelmsford" which leaves a whole swathe of countryside from Roxwell Road to Boreham as possibilities.

"The issues in this consultation are little different from those in the local plan on which the Liberal Democrat council consulted local people in 2001! The Tories just want to delay and delay in the hope of avoiding any electoral consequences this year.

A replacement plan could be delayed nearly four years and, without a new plan until Spring 2007, the people of the Borough will be uncertain as to where land will be allocated for housing, employment and other uses. Even when proposals are made by the Borough Council, the final decision rests with a Government Inspector whose ruling is now mandatory - unlike the old system when it was advisory.

The new railway station and secondary school needed in the eastern part of Chelmsford will still be distant dreams. They would now be well on the drawing-board if the proposals for Boreham had gone ahead".