Luton & South Beds. Joint Planning Committee (JPC)

 

OPTION 1: Leave the Preferred Options Proposals largely the same as  

                      before

 

This is the easiest and quickest / least cost option available to the JPC.  The JPC have taken years and spent huge amounts of money on technical reports to get to this point.   Some members of the JPC feel fervently that what has been prepared and made the subject of the Public Consultation that ended in June 2009 is absolutely the correct strategy for the future and the best way to allow them to meet the Government housing targets as laid down in the East of England Plan and the Milton Keynes and South Midlands sub-Regional Strategy.

 

Advised by the Joint Technical Unit (JTU) the JPC decided at their meeting on 23rd October 2009 that despite the huge levels of public opposition to developing east of Luton ( see here  -

URL: URL: http://www.centralbedfordshire.gov.uk/modgov/Published/C00000636/M00003135/$$ADocPackPublic.pdf   

PAGE 15 onwards - to understand the enormous opposition to east of Luton development , 1,452even with the scandal of nearly 5,000 individual KEOLG postcard objections being dismissed as just ONE single objection).  The JTU advised the JPC on 23rd October 2009 that the public objections did not, in their view, raise any new substantive objections and that in the opinion of the JTU the bases for the Core Strategy in its current form remained entirely sound.  A Liberal Democrat motion during the same JPC meeting asking for east of Luton to be removed as a preferred  expansion option and for a re-examination of all the original 12/13 possible areas was voted down 10:2.

 

If you have not already done so, you need to read the notes against 3rd November and 7th December to understand some of the additional factors that have now entered the decision-making process for the JPC.  It must be noted that despite any revised inputs from Luton Borough Council (LBC), the JPC is within their rights to decide to ignore the inputs – even from one of its two main stakeholders – and still choose this option as their way forward. Ignoring any LBC revised inputs would not necessarily make the Core Strategy “unsound” in planning terms - see the tests of soundness referenced in the notes here:

 

 

 

Looking further ahead in the timeline you will see that there will be a further public consultation and also an Examination in Public.  

 

The final point to be made here is that until now there has been a solid grouping supporting the Core Strategy in its current form – in fact all members of the JPC except for the Liberal Democrats.  Conservative central policy going forward to a general election in about May 20010 is that proposals to meet housing targets by building in another council’s area would not be allowed.(See here for full details  Conservative Policy.doc ).  Conservative members of the JPC, from Central Bedfordshire, are therefore under pressure to relent and follow the central Conservative Party line.  Have in mind, however, that despite the pressure the members of the JPC are not bound to necessarily conform!