I was very interested to read in last month’s Finchampstead Magazine that a meeting has been arranged at 8 p.m. on Friday, 8^th October, in the Memorial Hall to discuss the Government Draft Planning Statement that threatens radically to change the control of planning.  The Parish Council had already picked up on this and wrote in July to the District Council to seek clarification of the situation.

The letter from the District Council confirmed that the changes were expected to come into force in September.  The existing Structure Plans will be done away with, and a system of Regional Spatial Strategies (RSS) introduced.  Local Plans, or as they will be called in future ‘Local Development Frameworks’, produced by District Councils will have to conform with these.

The RSS for this area will be produced by the South East England Regional Assembly, which covers Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire – a vast area.  I understand that some of the members of this Assembly are ‘elected members from the region’, but in the absence of any information about who these people are, and the fact that the actual Assembly itself is not directly elected concerns me – indeed the response from the District Council appears to indicate that there may only be two of its councillors involved.

With the Government seemingly determined to concrete over as much of the south of England as it can, especially with high density developments to meet its spurious claims that vast numbers of new housing is required, this would seem to be a very worrying step.  Local Councils, both Parish and District, will have very little influence on planning decisions and, as was stated in last month’s article, with the existing designations of land being disregarded, Finchampstead could change out of all recognition.

I would urge everyone who wishes to keep Finchampstead as it is, to attend the meeting on 8^th October.’

Lauraine Newcombe

The date this page was last altered was March 11, 2007.

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