Message from John Bishop from JRA.
The TRDC Green Belt Review is to be discussed at next week’s Local Plan Sub Committee. If you have not already looked at it, the report is attached. The outcome is probably more favourable than we had feared and looks to make sense. It should be noted that it will be hard to challenge the conclusions of the independent consultants unless we have very solid grounds as they are experts in this matter.
Link to access the next online meeting:
(Before next meeting is held, this link will show the last meeting where John Bishop talks from 4:30 to 10:32 minutes.)
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_YzA2ODA0N2EtNDhmZS00OTI4LWE4NjAtZDE3OTBjOGJhMDli%40thread.v2/0?context=%7B%22Tid%22%3A%2258420664-1284-4d81-9225-35da8165ae7a%22%2C%22Oid%22%3A%22af1e2ce5-2a72-4c4f-aa26-781a4d347ddf%22%2C%22IsBroadcastMeeting%22%3Atrue%2C%22role%22%3A%22a%22%7D&btype=a&role=a
The overall view from the Joint RA Working Group is that even if TRDC use all the sites in the ‘new’ grey belt, they would still get nowhere near the 13,800 that the government demand. The achievable number based on this report could be well short of this, although we do not yet know the site specifics or numbers.
There is also a Site Hierarchy Document on the same agenda. Whilst the overall conclusions of this document make sense, there seems to be a large number of errors/inaccuracies in the detail of this document, and the Joint RA will be asking for it to be checked and corrected. Please do refer for your areas and come back with any items of particular concern.
We will be speaking at the LPSC meeting this Wednesday with the key points being based on the above. Hopefully this makes sense but, if you have anything else, can you please come back to me as soon as possible.
We also had a meeting with Gagan our MP. Some time ago Gary wrote to him about the disastrous Grey Belt definition. End of last week we got an email saying he was over this way and would we like to meet. He gave us half an hour on Tuesday. We invited along Jon Bishop from the Joint RA and Chris Berry from CPRE Herts.
Gagan thinks the picture is bleak and Labour will push Grey Belt and their required numbers to the n’th degree. He also thought there is a very strong possibility that if Local Plans are not found sound (DBC), or in TRDC’s case – submitted with Labour’s numbers, the plan process will be taken over and sites imposed in order to reach the higher numbers. Note – up to now Gov’s have threatened but not actually done it, but Labour may make an example of TRDC to ‘frighten’ other councils with no Local Plan. It was quite a depressing meeting.
However, a request was made to Gagan that if we got the Joint RA together, would he be prepared to be in a photo showing that he had met with us. This then grew into an idea of getting a cross party, apolitical meet together with Hertfordshire MPs and as many local community RA’s and groups as we can find, but not local councillors. Gagan asked that due to MP’s diaries, this could better be achieved at Westminster.
So we will now try to get together all the MP’s which cover DBC, TRDC, Watford, St Albans and Hertsmere, CPRE Herts, and community groups/residents’ associations. This group may also reflect those covering the new Unitary authority if Herts is split into two, which is possibly the most sensible cost saving option.
We are not sure what good, if any, such a meeting will achieve, but raising the issue of the loss of so much green belt in South West Hertfordshire, and aiming to get consensus across all the MP’s by showing we represent the views of thousands of Hertfordshire residents (and voters!), surely can’t do any harm.