Epsom & Ewell Borough Council has one of the ten oldest, and most out-of-date local plans in the country, dating back to July 2007. Renewing the local plan has suffered years of delays and setbacks, putting the borough firmly in the sites of central government.

If Angela Rayner’s proposals for planning policy changes are rolled out in December as expected, the Borough’s housing targets will more than quadruple from the 181 dwellings per annum required to be delivered under the current ‘Core Strategy 2007’, to 817 dwellings per annum. This would result in Epsom & Ewell growing by 50% over the plan period, fundamentally changing its character and resulting in ever increasing traffic jams and a lack of infrastructure and facilities such as schools and GPs.

Epsom only has enough available brownfield land for approximately 4.5 years of building at Rayner’s proposed target rate. Once this brownfield land is used up, Green Belt land will need to be sacrificed at a rate of over 20ha per year to meet this target. That’s equivalent to an area of over 50 football pitches every single year.

Councillors have recognised that the proposed housing target is much too high, writing to Angela Rayner on 13 September 2024 stating ‘these new numbers are immense and could destroy our historic district and market town.’

In the latest edition of the Ewell Village Residents Association, councillors have also acknowledged that, if they don’t submit a revised Local Plan to the planning inspector by early January 2025 using the existing planning rules and targets, they will need to significantly rework the Local Plan proposals over the following 6 months to meet the astronomical new targets. If this happens, none of the Green Belt would be safe.

If the draft Local Plan is not submitted for review to the Planning Inspector by early January, there will be very serious implications for the borough:

• A mandatory housing target of 817 dwellings per year will be applied
• The council will have to identify hundreds of hectares of Green Belt land, allowing building on all available land across the borough.
• The cost of the Local Plan, already £1.37m above the original budget, will increase significantly as considerable further work will be required.
• The, already very out-of-date current local plan will be extended for a further period during which speculative development will increase.

There is a solution. Or at least the possibility of a stay of execution.

After years of delays to the Local Plan process, including another 11-month delay approved in November 2023, the council should now claw a month or two back and accelerate the public consultation and submission to the planning inspector.

It is still possible for the council to delay the impact of Ms Rayner’s proposals if the draft Local Plan is issued for the 6-week consultation before the end of October 2024, and then submitted to the planning inspector in early January 2025.

Other councils have taken these steps. For instance, Winchester council stated ‘Given the advanced stage of work that the new Local Plan has reached, and the significant delay and cost if matters are not expedited at this juncture, Officers therefore have recommended that the new Local Plan be approved by Cabinet and the Council for publication and then submitted for examination as soon as practically possible.’ Their plan subsequently went out to consultation in late August, giving them a chance to beat the deadline.

Other councils, such as St Albans and Uttlesford District Council have progressed similar steps. St Albans Council have taken the unusual approach of opening the 6 week consultation on their draft Local Plan, on 26 September 2024, before obtaining full council approval, scheduled for 16 October. This makes sense, as the consultation results do not impact the Local Plan that is to be submitted for inspection, so the two activities can be undertaken concurrently to save precious time in the process.

At the 24 Sept 2024 LPPC committee meeting, Residents Association councillors assured residents that they were doing all they can ‘to preserve and protect the Green Belt’, with Cllr Goldman (RA) asking residents to ‘trust us’.

This being the case, the council should focus all their efforts on issuing the draft Local Plan for consultation by the end of October to save time, save money and save the borough from the destruction foreseen by Cllr Dallen in his letter to Angela Rayner. Residents will trust councillors to do the right thing if they see those councillors getting on and doing it.

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#greenbelt #localplan #epsom #ewell #planning