LOCAL PLAN UPDATE

RAGE UPDATE  –  LOCAL PLAN 30 Mar 2020

30.3.20.

Dear Friends,

I hope you are all keeping well, social distancing and self-isolating wherever necessary.  Please stay safe.  This is, of course, the big issue at present, but normal life will resume at some stage in the future

It seems a long time since we last communicated, so I thought I would bring you up to date on issues relating to the Local Plan.

You will recall that the last time I wrote about this it was to say that the Local Plan had been ‘paused’ to enable the new NEDDC administration to seek to amend the Plan to exclude Green Belt sites from it.

I know that Lee Rowley, M.P. posted a couple of weeks ago that the Plan had now been ‘unpaused’, i.e. it was going ahead as previously written.  After extensive legal advice, together with discussions with the Planning Inspectorate, it became apparent that the ‘old’ Plan was too far advanced to change things within it; a disappointment to us all, particularly your parish and district councillors, who have fought extremely hard to change things.

I have had very helpful discussions with Lee Rowley, M.P., together with Councillor Charlotte Cupitt, the NEDDC lead on the Local Plan, and we have considered further options available to us.

The next stage is that the Inspector is obliged to hold public consultations on the changes that she had already made to the Local Plan, i.e. the removal of large sites at Eckington and Dronfield from the Plan.  This will be an opportunity to show that this decision is unfair on Killamarsh, in that we will be left to take the lion’s share of new development (comparative to population) under what is left of the Plan.

There are a number of areas that show that the Westthorpe site is totally unsuitable for large-scale development.  I will not go into them in this message (we don’t know who views our open messages), so we will not forewarn them, but I am looking at six specific areas currently.  I will explain more at our next public meeting, whenever that might be.

I know little of the proposed site at Norwood because no-one has contacted me about it and there has been no outline planning permission sought on it.  If anyone has any information of the proposed Norwood site, please get a message to me through the RAGE website.

This has been a long haul for those who supported RAGE from the outset – nearly 10 years.  We are not going to give in and will continue to fight for what is right.

Stick with us and continue with your excellent support.  We will need you to make written comments when the time is right (soon).  I will be present when the Inspector holds the next public inquiry into the Plan changes, as I know some of your parish and district councillors will.

Good Luck, stay healthy and keep safe.

Best Regards,

Paul Johnson, Chair of R.A.G.E.

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