Letter: The Local Plan Adoption Timetable Is, Of Course, Political

Published on: 23 Mar, 2019
Updated on: 23 Mar, 2019

From Julian Lyon

Former prospective Independent candidate for the borough council

In response to: Council ‘Fact-checking’ Inspector’s Report on Local Plan

Cllr Spooner tweeted yesterday evening to say that the fact-checking is complete.

Interesting choice of timing to vote on the Local Plan on April 25, between the time postal votes will have been sent in and polling day. Presumably, that means two sets of voters will have differing baselines against which to cast their votes. The debate will no doubt reveal more about councillors standing for re-election than they have explained to their postal voters at least.

Cllr Paul Spooner’s Fact-check complete Tweet

Make no mistake here, this is a political issue, and the timing is almost entirely political. It was made a political issue by the confrontational approach adopted by the lead politicians, the reticence in listening to community groups, the manifestos last time round which promised to protect the green belt, and the positions of many of the candidates in this election.

That means it is inappropriate to vote on it during the period of purdah when politics is meant to be suspended ahead of an election, and our councillors, if they have any ethical or moral compass, should simply vote to defer the decision to adopt until after the election.

The council leader, Paul Spooner, presumably needs to get this plan adopted so he can make the case to his constituency that he has kept the number of dwellings planned for the Ash & Tongham area to a minimum, even though the countryside beyond the green belt around his ward is in a higher tier of the spatial hierarchy than those sites being removed from the green belt on the other side of the Borough.

This, absolutely, is about politics. If Cllr Spooner was not fearful that the electorate might force a change of heart, he would not railroad this through on  April 25. If it were not a political issue, the pre-adoption training session and the vote itself could be held in the first several weeks of the new council, and the (decent) delay would be minimal.

I don’t suppose we can expect his deputy at GBC, Cllr Matt Furniss, to make this a governance matter as he almost immediately retweeted his leader’s euphoric tweet.

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