Letter: I Hope Proper Scrutiny of the Ransom Strip Deal Will Still Be Undertaken

Published on: 23 Mar, 2024
Updated on: 23 Mar, 2024

From: John Rigg

former R4GV lead councillor for Regeneration

In response to: Ransom Strip Decision Should Not Have Been Attempted By a Council Officer

Bernard Quoroll is correct in saying ransom strips, particularly high value ones, should not come within officer delegated powers to agree. Neither should such complex agreements once settled avoid the full scrutiny of the council members.

Unusually with a ransom strip there are only two parties that can release the value so without meeting the needs of both sides no progress can be made. If stalemate occurs no economic benefit is generated for either party.

GBC sought advice from two external advisory firms one general practice firm and one specialist in major residential land transactions.

While there was consistent lobbying by the University of Surrey to put pressure on the council to make concessions relating to the sale of the ransom strip, I as the Executive member responsible for Major Projects from 2020 until May 2023 and in receipt external advice resisted pressure to recommend what was in my view an inadequate basis to proceed.

I also had a career as a chartered surveyor involved in complex development transactions to assist my reaching that view.

The university is an important part of the local economy.

Any proposal would need to fit the circumstances of the university as the principal delivery party of the project but any arrangement must also deliver an important windfall payment for a council in some financial difficulty. No agreement was reached by the time I left the council.

The complexity of the transaction required by the university not being experienced house builders yet at the time wanting to take forward the project themselves and not having funding for an upfront purchase nor a willingness to agree a later payment they might not be able to finance once planning consent was granted were all issues to manage.

The council also has a duty to try to meet the housing targets and ideally not appear to be holding up the delivery of homes and a major allocated housing site and to this end worked to explore structuring concessions .

All this requires complex prolonged negotiations and some judgements to find compromise which must be made to find workable arrangements.

All negotiations are accepted as subject to contract, subject to council approval and are conducted on a “without prejudice” basis but once “heads of terms” are identified as potentially acceptable it is essential proper council scrutiny then takes place before advancing the arrangements to the lawyers to document .

Subsequently, lawyers instructed to document the agreement will identify issues or negotiate arrangements which will likely necessitate a return to the council for approval of the final transaction.

After some years of discussions I hope a good potential outcome for the council has been identified and that proper and appropriate scrutiny will now be undertaken before an agreement is concluded.

Responses to Letter: I Hope Proper Scrutiny of the Ransom Strip Deal Will Still Be Undertaken

Ben Paton Reply

March 23, 2024 at 12:59 pm

After R4GV was successful in the 2019 Local Elections, R4GV made John Rigg the lead councillor for Planning and Development. In this role it was John Rigg who decided not to review the 2019 Local Plan. It was his decision or indecision not to update or change it.

His refusal to review the 2019 Local Plan has led to massive inappropriate and unsustainable development in former green belt Villages. Yet John Rigg writes regularly to the Dragon giving the impression that he has just been an observer of council actions when, in fact, he was the man in charge.

R4GV ran for election in 2019 on a manifesto that emphasised the need to revise the 2019 Local Plan. But once in office he did nothing about it.

In the letter above he writes: “The council also has a duty to try to meet the housing targets and ideally not appear to be holding up the delivery of homes and a major allocated housing site and to this end worked to explore structuring concessions.”

But R4GV ran for election on the premise that the 2019 Housing Target was 1) based on false demographic projections 2) was clearly overstated.

R4GV knew then and should know now that the three “major allocated housing sites” are all on green field, former Green Belt farms: Blackwell Farm, Gosden Hill Farm and Three Farms Meadow aka land at the former Wisley airfield. Ostensibly he has not lifted a finger to review the allocation of these sites – even now that it is obvious that they are not all needed to meet even the grossly overstated 2019 Housing Target.

Note that the even Inspector Bore at the Examintion of the 2019 Local Plan found that the council’s proposed Housing Target was higher than could be justified – and he materially reduced it. The Housing Target is still based on false statistics. It is still too high and the number of houses in the construction pipeline is now certain to materially exceed that housing target. Yet for the past five years the council has done nothing to review that target.

The houses that are objectively needed are council houses: yet the 2019 Local Plan does not deliver many – or any at all!

Plainly John Rigg has turned out to be part of the problem not the solution.
- John Rigg Reply
  
  March 25, 2024 at 5:00 pm
  
  It is difficult to know where to start with Ben Paton’s letter; it is so full of errors. I counted at least
  eight. Here’s some:
  – I was never lead for Planning and Development;
  – I have never had a planning role and was not even on the planning committee;
  – the Local Plan situation was never remotely my decision on my own, as he suggests;
  – the Lib Dems did not share our view or our ambitions to challenge the 2019 Local Plan and the remaining Conservatives were not going to support us in seeking a review.
  
  Another small fact, the Lib Dem leader and others had voted with the Conservatives to pass the 2019 plan.
  
  Basic checking of facts by Mr Paton would show Planning was a Lib Dem-held portfolio within a shared council; something called a coalition. He may not be aware that this means any major decision requires consensus across the two parties. Mr Paton clearly forgot this small fact.
  
  However, once in the coalition, R4GV did use its position to demand independent planning advice on the possibility of revoking the plan. This advice we required from leading planning lawyers.
  
  Importantly, it had to be lawyers not selected by the council, or by planning officers considered too closely connected with the inadequate plan.
  
  We wanted to know what were the chances of reviewing the plan to remove what we argued were, amongst other things, inflated housing allocations and inadequate regeneration policies. We sought senior planning advice on acting within the law.
  
  The lawyers’ clear view was that the prospects of putting the Local Plan “cake back into the oven to unbake it” (my words) was not credible. Worse still, they confirmed a Local Plan review risked triggering a bigger housing allocation.
  
  To start again would also need a totally new evidence base countering the just-approved evidence. This itself would need a majority of councillors to support the course of action necessary, with a huge budget for wholly uncertain results. This was simply not deliverable by R4GV, a minority party.
  
  There was also no expectation of finding the “exceptional circumstances” required by the law to put sites back into green belt once removed; something else Mr Paton fails to mention.
  
  We were stuck with ten years of evidence accumulated by Guildford Council’s planning officers to support the Conservative case for building on green belt. This 2019 evidence (note Local Plans must be evidence-based) was accepted by the inspector at the inquiry.
  
  To remind readers, all the 2019 Local Plan supporting evidence was scrutinised in the Local Plan hearing over many weeks by planning barristers challenging the evidence. The hearing convinced the independent inspector to decide the allocation was correct and to recommend the plan to the Secretary of State. He approved it and it was adopted by the Conservative Council, with the help of the then Lib Dem leader.
  
  To suggest I, as one councillor in 48, could magically overturn this whole process is mischievous.
  
  Mr Paton continues: “It was his (ie my) decision or indecision not to update or change it.” Ludicrous. Neither had I stood at the election “on revising” the Local Plan – it had not even been adopted during the bulk of the election campaign period. It was only adopted in the final week.
  
  I agree we would not have wanted to adopt it had we secured a clear majority, but the horse had bolted and the majority of councillors were not for change.
  
  Mr Paton continues: “His (ie my) refusal to review the 2019 Local Plan has led to massive inappropriate and unsustainable development in former green belt villages.” This is again pure mischievous misinformation.
  
  It reminds me of a Robin Horsley video where he said “don’t vote R4GV” to stop North Street. It’s called fake news and is ruining British politics and I for one, as a result, have no wish to stand again.
  
  Mr Paton is, of course, free to stand for election again. Rather than standing on the sidelines inventing facts he will discover, if elected, he cannot invent the law. No council that I am aware of has ever managed to put sites back into green belt once formally allocated for development in a Local Plan approved by the Secretary of State.
  
  The more important challenge, in my view, is today and now.
  
  Under current law, if housing targets are not met, there are still consequences; more green belt will be vulnerable. In any update of the plan (now announced, but at a snail’s pace, so I fear unlikely to help) we must avoid the same errors.
  
  If interested residents are confident of their facts and the evidence, they should try every method to reduce allocations through the proper process to protect green belt and our remaining villages. One sure-fire method to reduce incursions into green belt is to ensure there is a deliverable brownfield-first policy. Something Guildford planners have ducked since 2003.
  
  I have been committed to securing a proper Local Plan since 2011, with quality regeneration. There is now a Masterplan called “Shaping Guildford’s Future” (see http://www.shapingguildford.co.uk) to bring forward sustainable homes on brownfield sites. The Lib Dems have yet to decide if they will do anything beyond paying lip service to adopting this town plan, and the officers are the same Local Plan team as before.
  
  Whether Labour or Lib Dems are elected in the General Election be aware both national parties are committed to delivering higher housing numbers to meet housing need. This time we need to be ready, with our house in order.
  
  John Rigg is a former R4GV borough councillor
  - Ben Paton Reply
    
    March 25, 2024 at 8:12 pm
    
    Mr Rigg writes nothing that refutes the fact that he did nothing to revise the Local Plan for some four years after 2019 when he was on the GBC Executive as lead councillor for Regeneration.
    
    Instead he comes up with all sorts of extenuating circumstances.
    
    If he can point to anything he did while in office to revise the Local Plan then he should do so. Until he does my point stands.
    
    I am not wrong that he was on the Executive or that his party was in power. Whatever his job title may have been he clearly took a leading role on planning matters.
David Ogilvie Reply

March 25, 2024 at 10:10 am

Ben Paton’s comment is not relevant to the point that John Rigg was making.

Once the Conservatives had rushed through the 2019 Local Plan releasing large amounts of green belt the cost of rolling this back would be huge due to the beneficiaries claiming loss of value. Effectively this give away can not be undone.
Alan Judge Reply

March 26, 2024 at 10:48 am

Quote 1. “Neither had I stood at the election “on revising” the Local Plan – it had not even been adopted during the bulk of the election campaign period. It was only adopted in the final week.”

Quote 2. “I have been committed to securing a proper Local Plan since 2011, with quality regeneration.”

Mr Rigg seems conflicted.