Letter: Danger Lurks in Reviewing Any Local Plan

Published on: 15 May, 2021
Updated on: 16 May, 2021

From: Paul Follows

Lib Dem leader of Waverley Borough Council

In response to: Dragon Interview – Local MPs Give Their Views on Guildford’s Plan and Its Impact on Election Fortunes

Watching these MPs talk makes me feel as if I’m living in a different universe. A review of the Guildford Local Plan right now would, I am sure, do exactly what it would do if we did that in Waverley, raise the housing numbers.

Actually, we reviewed the calculations as well, to see if we wanted to reopen our Plan. Here, there would have been a rise in house delivery from 590 a year to 700.

I am not sure either of these MPs is fully aware of how the process actually works. It’s a mad process but it’s their government’s policy.

And if anyone thinks the White Paper on planning does anything other than make a bad situation worse they are living on the remote outskirts of the realms of reality.

The zoning rules being proposed will almost totally undermine local government planning, because the zones have to be approved by Westminster.

Responses to Letter: Danger Lurks in Reviewing Any Local Plan

Ben Paton Reply

May 16, 2021 at 3:15 pm

Mr Follows’ commentary says more about his party political allegiances and his ignorance of the evidence on which the Guildford Local Plan was supposedly premised.

One key difference between Guildford and Waverley is that the population projections (on which housing need is supposed to be based) for Guildford were and remain fundamentally wrong. As the Office for Statistics Regulation confirmed this week, the ONS population statistics for Guildford ‘had been overstated’.

Mr Follows should examine the facts and get them right before commenting on another council’s Local Plan debate.

It is tedious listening to the same party propaganda endlessly repeated by individuals who have more interest in climbing the greasy pole than in assessing the evidence and working for local residents.