campaign for fairer housing

  In recent years, quite a number of councils’ local plans have been found unsound or in need of main modifications by planning inspectors.  Several councils were said to be too ambitious about plans for a so-called ‘garden village’. As we know, WBC’s local plan relies on a ‘Loddon Valley Garden Village’, a.k.a 4,000 houses to be dumped on Hall Farm between Shinfield and Arborfield. 

Residents who have studied it consider the Hall Farm proposal unsuitable for the Shinfield-Arborfield area. Plausible grounds for objecting to the plan include its failure to show convincingly that highway capacity and public transport availability will cope with large-scale development on the site. It does not clearly demonstrate how utilities infrastructure will be in place when required. And its preference for Hall Farm over other sites on sustainabiity grounds looks questionable, too.

The same weaknesses have been picked up by planning inspectors judging other councils’ local plans, and have been cited as reasons for not accepting them.

Questions on highway capacity

Tandridge District Council (Surrey) submitted a local plan involving a ‘garden community’ with around 4,000 dwellings in South Godstone. It was unsound and should be withdrawn, the planning inspector ruled. Modifications would not be enough to make the plan sound. He said there were ‘significant unanswered questions’ concerning highway capacity. More work, he said, was needed to ensure local roads weren’t overwhelmed by proposals for a 4,000-home garden community.

‘Significant unanswered questions about highway capacity’, and a risk of traffic generated by 4,000 houses ‘overwhelming local road': He might almost have been commenting on the Hall Farm proposal.

 Plans by Maidstone Council to create two ‘garden villages’ were also judged unsound for reasons of overburdening existing transport facilities in the area. The planning inspector considered a new railway station and better links to the M20 and M2 would be required to justify adopting the 5,000-home Lenham scheme. The new rail station would need to be built to serve the development at an early stage, and the council would need to do additional work to show that off-site improve- 

                      Above:- Protest against garden villages in Kent (Photos: BBC, Kent Today)

ments required to the M20 Junction 8 would be deliverable. The proposal for a 2,000-home garden village at Lidsing, on the border of Medway and Maidstone was also found to be ‘not sound’. For it to be made acceptable, the inspector said he would need further evidence that a safe connection could be achieved to a fourth arm of the M2 Junction 4. He also needed more detail on other off-site highways measures to mitigate the effects of the development.

Again, a council had proposed a local plan without doing enough to mitigate the impacts on traffic and transport of what they were proposing. 

The inspector’s report also required Maidstone Council to provide further eviden to show how it would deal with water treatment and quality. This is very much an issue locally too, where the new requirements of WBC’s housing plan would impose massive pressure on financially challenged Thames Water. The company is already struggling to cope, even with current demand on drinking water and waste water treatment.

Will the strategic infrastructure be there?

Another reason for rejection is when the inspectors question the council’s ability to see its long-term plan carried through satisfactorily. Uttlesford’s (NW Essex) local plan, with a Garden Community approach, was found to ‘predetermine’ the strategy ‘long beyond the plan period’ and was called ‘unduly inflexible’ .The inspectors were not convinced that the mechanisms by which the strategy would be delivered had been set out clearly. They were not satisfied the council had provided enough ‘detail and definition on strategic infrastructure requirements and scheme viability testing’.

Councils find all too it easy to dangle an inspirational future ‘garden village’ utopia before their residents. But convincing planning inspectors that the scheme will be implemented with the infrastructure required is another matter.  

A similar reason was given for sending back the local plan jointly produced by Colchester, Braintree and Tendring councils in Essex. It featured three ‘garden comunities’. Again, the inspector had doubts about the delivery of the strategic infrastructure these communities required, in particular the rapid transport system routes required. He ruled out two of the three proposals. He also noted that the ‘garden communities’ were strongly opposed by local residents. 

Both points are closely relevant to the Hall Farm development scheme. Planning inspectors can be influenced by a high level of local opposition to the ‘garden village’ proposal. They may well also find fault with its over-ambitious infrastructure requirements, 

Unrealistic timescales

Even when the problem wasn’t the ‘garden community’ itself, inspectors found  problems with local plans. Havant Borough Council (Hampshire) failed to get approval for its Local Plan in 2021. The Plan was sent back by the Government’s inspector because it has set unrealistically high targets for several housing projects.  The inspector referred to a study by Lichfields, entitled ‘Start to Finish’ (2nd Addition, February 2020). This showed sites of 2,000+ dwellings take on average 8.4 years from validation of first application to first completions, including the delivery of necessary infrastructure. Given the difficulties and timescales involved in getting these sites going, the Council’s forecast of first completions in 2026/27 was judged unrealistic. Its completion schedule had not taken into account the time needed to construct a link road first. The inspector concluded: ‘First completions are unlikely to occur until 9-10 years from now… Based on the assumed delivery rate of the Council, this removes 400 dwellings from the Council’s anticipated supply over the Plan period.’ 

WBC’s Local Plan forecasts about 500 houses built by 2030. Suppose the first planning permissions were granted soon after inspectors approved the plan, say in 2026. That house-building figure looks unrealistic, if the Lichfields study of completion timescales is accurate. 

Skewed site comparisons

Finally, there’s the question of how well the local plan convinces the inspectors that alternatives have been duly considered. As happens quite often with plan examinations, the Hart Council (Hampshire) LP was criticised by the inspector for lacking evidence on deliverability of the planned housing. In addition, a further assessment was called for via the Sustainability  

                         Above: Plans for a ‘garden town’ near Winchfield (Hart DC) encountered strong local opposition 

Appraisal process,  which the inspector said needed to be carried out in an impartial manner considering all possible alternative future strategies. That implyied that Hart Council’s appraisal wasn’t impartial. He noted ‘a lack of testing to demonstrate the new settlement to be the most appropriate long-term growth strategy’, compared with other options.

How the comparisons between Hall Farm and other sites were used in Wokingham’s Sustainability Appraisal is likewise open to question. The sustainability case for Hall Farm over other sites such as Ashridge Manor and Twyford Gardens does not appear strong when you look at the metrics used in the WBC Sustainability Appraisal.

So WBC’s local plan, with its cuddly-sounding ‘Loddon Valley Garden Village’, is NOT a done deal, and we mustn’t think it is. 

The reasons for objecting to it are reasons why the planning inspectors have sent back other local plans. 

They can do the same with this one.