Scrutiny Committee To Discuss Draft Local Plan

Published on: 8 May, 2014
Updated on: 8 May, 2014

Guildford Borough councillors will consider its draft Local Plan at a Joint Scrutiny Committee meeting on Thursday, May 15.

The council said that the draft incorporates public feedback from last year’s Issues and Options consultation and aims to meet the changing needs and future development of the borough. The committee will discuss the document and make recommendations to the Executive ahead of public consultation this summer.

The chairman of the Joint Scrutiny Committee, Cllr Terence Patrick, said: “The committee is well aware of the public interest and concerns about the Local Plan. We will consider the draft document and highlight any recommendations we feel are necessary to ensure the plan is fit for public consultation.”

The Draft Local Plan covers key issues including affordable housing, the economy and employment, infrastructure, sustainability, the green belt and development. Following the Joint Scrutiny Committee meeting, the Executive and council will consider the draft at meetings in June. A second period of intense public consultation will start in July.

View the Joint Scrutiny Committee agenda and draft Local Plan documents on Guildford Borough Council’s website.

Responses to Scrutiny Committee To Discuss Draft Local Plan

Nick Norton Reply

May 16, 2014 at 5:25 pm

After viewing the webcast, it strikes me the senior executive and senior planning officers of Guildford Borough Council brook no criticism, even from their own councillors.
There are plenty of residents that have spent many hours analysing and commenting on the evidence base and have found it to be wanting.
It is very pleasing to see councillors at last standing up to the bully-boy tactics of these senior council employees and asking for the previously imperceptibly altered annual house building target to be reviewed and by implication reviewed downwards in the face of the multiple constraints of the borough e.g. a gap town with 89% of borough land in the green belt.

The new draft Local Plan documents put forward for the new round of consultation from July 1 appear more incoherent and chaotic than those offered in the first consultation and appear to continue to be based on the thinking of 2009 when a previous putative local plan was put on hold in the face of a general election.
If they are an illustration of the level of professional planning and financial competence being offered to residents and their democratically elected representatives at this critical point in the Local Plan preparation then there is something deeply wrong at the heart of this council.
Jim Allen Reply

May 18, 2014 at 12:08 am

Sadly I have to totally agree with Nick.

Council officers have forgotton only one thing – they are public servants not public dictators and it is time they learnt who pays their wages.

I attempted to report a statutory smell from Slyfield last week. Not one officer would take the complaint, yet it is their duty to act on such a complaint and, as far as I am concerned, they have failed to do so for 10 years.