That's the cunning Government plan on the housing law restructuring. The price for reducing the red tape has been the need to produce an acceptable Housing development plan that MUST meet the required housing targets.Byronsnr wrote:For at least one hundred years Hertfordshire has played host to continuous London overspill, pillaged, plundered and ransacked of its green and open countryside in favour of unfettered housing development, unrestrained settlement & urban sprawl and the loss of many buildings and houses which today would be protected by listings. EHC District plan once read may well induce a catatonic coma but the district must only accept its concept on the proviso that under no circumstances do we accept the dwelling target numbers! These, their type number and yearly allocation we only accept at the districts residents’ discretion, in this our “Theoretical Democracy”. Herts has already done its bit !
If the final District plan doesn't meet those targets it won't be accepted and with no plan in place (and a draft plan or a plan that doesn't accommodate the required development targets) the law is on the side of any development applications as assumed to be justified.
It's been a very clever sell to use the removal of red tape to force the housing targets through. I watched with dismay here and elsewhere people lauding the sensible removal of the mechanisms that have controlled development in the past with little idea just how much control has been removed from the democratic process.
We will see a massive housing development boom and we see green belt being eaten up and whole new housing communities plonked all over the place and by the time we realise what damage has been done there will be no going back. The only real comfort is that it will have been a result of the democratic process