Opinion: Sitting Tight On the Local Plan Is Still the Safest Option – For Now

Published on: 31 Oct, 2022
Updated on: 2 Nov, 2022

By George Potter

Lib Dem borough councillor for Burpham

Neils Laub, in his opinion piece North Hertfordshire Planning Decision Has Implications for Guildford astutely points out the planning inspector’s report for North Herts and the exciting precedent that this sets. 

However, whilst this might appear to be good news for Guildford, the reality is potentially somewhat more subdued.

The first thing to note is that any reduction in the housing target does not automatically mean that sites can be returned to the green belt. The relevant planning law states that “exceptional circumstances” are required to alter the boundaries of the green belt. That test applies regardless of whether you are expanding or reducing the green belt, and this test was referenced by the North Herts planning inspector.

Cllr George Potter

So it is not enough for Guildford Borough Council to say “we don’t need all these houses anymore, so we want to return this land to the green belt”. Instead, the council needs to convince a planning inspector that exceptional circumstances exist to justify adding new land to the green belt.

The fact that the “new” land previously was green belt is, unfortunately, irrelevant as far as planning law is concerned. This means, that in practice, even if we get a reduction in the housing target, it may still not be possible to re-designate land as green belt.

Second, Guildford’s Local Plan makes use of the 2016-based figures for assessing housing need. These figures are much higher than the 2018-based figures but significantly lower than the 2014-based figures. When the Local Plan was finalised it was in a very, very brief window in which the government allowed councils to use the lower 2016-based figures.

However by the time the Local Plan was formally adopted the government had already moved the goalposts to insist that councils should return to using the 2014-based figures, because the artificially inflated 2014 figures made it easier for the Conservatives to claim they were on track to hit national housing targets. Guildford was able to slip through using the 2016-based figures, but other councils are still having to use the 2014-based figures.

So the problem for Guildford has been that, while we all know that the 2018-based figures are more accurate and significantly lower, the government has still, to date, insisted that the only acceptable figures to use are the 2014-based figures. (The government’s rules for calculating housing need can be read here.)

And this is the very good reason why Guildford has not yet re-opened the Local Plan.

As long as the government insists that the 2014-based figures must be used, any council which dares to do otherwise will face being, and I quote, “scrutinised more closely at examination”.

What does that mean? It means that if Guildford re-opens the Local Plan and says it wants to use the 2018-based figures instead, then the planning inspector might disagree and impose the current government rule of using the 2014-based figures.

Since the 2014-based figures mean more housing than the 2016-based figures used by the Local Plan, this means that any re-opening of the Local Plan carries a risk of resulting in higher, not lower, housing targets.

So GBC has, in accordance with independent, external legal advice, taken the stance of waiting for the precedents to be set by the planning inspectorate.

The North Herts decision sets a really good precedent. Here you had a council which was otherwise faced with having to use the 2014-based figures, and so it had nothing to lose, meaning there was no risk in trying to persuade the examiner to accept the use of 2018-based figures. And, in this case, the examiner agreed with the council.

That’s fantastic. It’s an excellent precedent that using the 2018-based figures can be acceptable.

But “one swallow does not a summer make”, and a single precedent does not by itself signal a watershed moment; especially in a case like this where the precedent is for a council faced with otherwise having to use the 2014-based figures, rather than for a council like Guildford which is using the 2016-based figures.

Unfortunately, until more precedents are created there will still be no guarantee of a reduction in the housing target and it is still unwise to rush ahead with re-opening the Local Plan; doing so will still carry the risk of facing an unfriendly inspector and having the higher 2014-based figures imposed.

Once more precedents are established and it becomes clear that the 2018-based figures can be used, or the government finally changes its official methodology, it will then make sense to re-open the Local Plan. Until then the wisest course of action is to sit tight.

And that’s precisely what GBC is doing.

I note that David Roberts, in his own letter to The Guildford Dragon, (Where Do the Lib Dems Stand on the Local Plan?) has had, as he so often does, a pop at the Liberal Democrats with the usual, unfounded, and fact-free, accusation that by being realists we are somehow pro-development at any cost.

The Lib Dem position on the Local Plan is as it has always been. Within the constraints imposed on us by central government, we want to do the best we can for all residents of the borough.

That means strengthening planning policies to ensure that any new development is as sustainable, as high quality and as supported by the necessary infrastructure as possible. It means ensuring that developments contain affordable housing and it means ensuring that development does not come at the expense of wildlife and biodiversity.

But it also means acknowledging that Guildford borough is grotesquely unaffordable to live in, that the needs of our young people and new families to be able to afford homes to live in is more important than some people’s dislike of change, and that the responsibility of local politicians is to attempt to find an equitable balance between competing interests and viewpoints on development when disagreements inevitably arise.

Or, to put it another way, the Liberal Democrat stance is responsible decision-making, guided first and foremost by the desire to do the greatest possible good for the greatest possible number of people within our borough, and not just for those who want no or very little development.

One final point, quite often I see people suggesting that the Liberal Democrats are somehow blocking R4GV from doing what they want to do on the Local Plan. That is completely untrue. There is no substantive disagreement between the coalition parties on the Local Plan, and R4GV’s party leader holds the Planning Policy portfolio.

So if Mr Roberts is looking for an explanation of R4GV’s actions on the Local Plan then I can only advise him to ask them the question directly.

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