Rutland County Council Planning officers want to waste millions, by pulling the Submitted Local Plan For Rutland.
At a special meeting planned for the 1st September 2021, the planning department is putting the recommendation to a full special meeting of the council.
The current plan has taken years to complete. I was a member of Oakham Town Council when the County Council started this plan and the town council contributed nothing, I was thinking Oakham Town Council had done a dreadful job wasting over £20,000 on the town plan. I assume that will now also have to be redone.
Someone at Rutland County Council needs to be held responsible for these constant losses.
I strongly believe that the planning department needs to been contracted out to another local authority like others departments are.
Despite many poor reports over the years, I believe the planning department was only kept in house for financially reasons 106 money and they seemed to often fail big time with those deals. Now there is no such thing as 106 contributions after it was replaced by the new Infrastructure Levy where The levy is a fixed proportion of a scheme's value paid by a developer. Perhaps the time has come to sack the head of planning and a few who have been in the job and contributed to many of the past large losses.
No one was ever held responsible for the millions of lost contributions, from the Oakham North development in 2015 the council was finally told about a huge mistake made by the planning department in 2011. The mistake was made by officers in 2011 and related to a 1,000 home housing development in Oakham. Then the, Council chief executive Helen Briggs said "Larkfleet Homes pointed out the error but agreed to pay £4.8m, much less than first discussed. No-one has been sacked but the whole planning team has been retrained."
That planning error cost it almost £2m. Surely the time has come for the council members to look seriously at how the whole department is run.
For many years nearly all if not all fights residents have had with this council, have come about because of the planning department failings.
I think this whole Local Plan and St George's Barracks mess is the responsibility of the planning department and the Rutland Conservatives of a certain period of time.
The planning department proposal is:
1. Withdraw the submitted Local Plan (submitted to Government in February 2021) under
Regulation 22 of the Local Plans Regulations from the process of Examination in
Public following the decision made by Council on 22nd March 2021 not to accept the
offer of £29.4m Housing Investment Fund (HIF) grant funding which has impacted the
viability and deliverability of the proposed St. George’s Garden Village scheme and,
therefore, the wider development strategy affecting the soundness of the Local Plan.
2. Approves the creation of an earmarked reserve of £1,395,000 to resource the making
of a new Local Plan for the County and operating without a plan (as detailed in Section
5) and that authority be delegated to the Strategic Director of Places and the Section
151 Officer in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Planning and the Portfolio
Holder for Finance, Governance and Performance, Change and Transformation to
release funds from the earmarked reserve as required.
3. Approves that Council receives a quarterly statement of the Budget position in light of
the cost uncertainty so that it can track whether the earmarked reserve is sufficient or
can be released accordingly.
4. Approves the need to positively prepare and submit a new Local Plan informed by an
updated evidence base for the benefit of the County of Rutland, its residents and
businesses that will:
i. Deliver the corporate plan vision and themes for the County;
ii. Provide for sustainable growth to meet its objectively assessed housing and
employment needs, utilising and promoting sustainable transport wherever
possible, which will combine to contribute towards achieving the Government’s net
zero carbon emissions 2050 target;
iii. Protect and enhance the County’s heritage, character and natural capital (including
air quality, water resource management and biodiversity); and
iv. Ensure the timely delivery of all necessary infrastructure.
5. Approves the development of robust and effective strategic partnerships to support
plan-making through the duty to cooperate and required for a viable, deliverable and
sound plan.
6. Approves the establishment of a cross-party group to provide oversight of the process
of making a new Local Plan and delegates authority to the Strategic Director of Places
in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Planning to establish a governance
structure in line with the Corporate Project Management governance framework.
