Author: SaveCulhamGreenBelt (Page 5 of 5)

Do you need help filling in your Representation Form regarding the development plans?

Save Culham Green Belt and Culham Parish Council are holding a 2-hr drop-in session

SAT 25 November 09:30 – 11:30 am.

We will be on hand to help you fill in these rather off-putting forms. We can also help with posting/delivering them to the council.

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If you prefer to do your response online here you can do this via the SODC website. The link is here:

https://consult.southandvale.gov.uk/portal/south/planning/pol/local_plan_2033/localplan2033

Note: You have to register and receive an email back first.

If you responded to the previous consultation you will have a user name and password already.

(If you have forgotten click on ‘Forgotten username’ or ‘Forgotten password’.

Note: at Question 3 The main Policy we need to respond to is ‘STRAT 7’

DEADLINE: Thursday 30 November 5pm.

Update: The deadline for responses to this new and final consultation has been extended to 5pm 30^th November.  Come to our meeting on 6^th November (full details to be announced) to find out how to respond.

SODC have now published the final draft of their Local Plan.
(See links on SODC Local Plan and Culham page of this website)

Consultation is open until 5pm on 22^nd 30th November 2017.

It is VITAL that everyone responds.

We are still fighting and an Inspector will make the final decision.

Council-led Drop-in session:

Thursday 19^th October 4-8 pm
Culham Primary School
Call in to ask the Council difficult questions, inspect maps and plans.

Save Culham Green Belt Public Meeting

Monday 6 November, 7pm
Church of St Pauls, Culham
Save Culham Green Belt (SCGB) will also hold a public meeting to help villagers respond to this new Consulation. You may like to wait until this meeting before making your objections to the Council. 

Regulations state that the local planning authority should submit a plan it considers “sound”, namely that  it is:

~ Positively prepared seeking to meet objectively assessed need

~ Justified, i.e the most appropriate strategy when considered against the reasonable alternatives

~ Effective, i.e deliverable over  its period (which is to 2033)

~ Consistent with National Policy

We will be arguing that it is UNSOUND and is none of the above.

Speakers from Save Culham Green Belt committee have given impassioned, strictly-timed, 3-minute speeches at SODC’s Scrutiny, Cabinet and Full Council meetings during September. Michael Tyce from the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) has also made excellent speeches at all three. Culham Parish Council have also fielded speakers for Scrutiny and Full Council.
We had a good crowd of Culham protestors chanting Save Culham Green Belt as councillors entered to vote at the Full Council meeting held in Crowmarsh Gifford.

Mr Tyce from CPRE has commented: ‘Culham protest group … are a model protest group being forceful but polite and well organised and prepared’.

Despite this, and lobbying of all 36 councillors by email as well, John Cotton managed to get his Local Plan voted through for publication… We continue the fight. We still have hope.

NEXT PHASE

6 WEEK CONSULTATION / OCT-NOV & DROP-IN SESSION

The next step will be a NEW round of Public Consultation between 9am Weds 11 October and DEADLINE 5pm Wed 22 November 2017. During this time there will be a drop-in event held by SODC in Culham: 19 October: 4pm-8pm Culham Primary School.

Save Culham Green Belt and/or the Parish Council will also aim to hold another public meeting to help people with the complexities involved in this round of consultation where we are asked to comment on the legality, soundness and justification of the Local Plan. We will advise the date of this meeting.

Following that there will be a Public Enquiry (early next year) in front of an independent Inspector and we will be providing him with a number of reports from environmental, legal and planning perspectives. Hopefully he will see reason and have the Culham site removed from the Plan.

Meanwhile offers of any help are welcome as well as any publicity stunt ideas. You can get in contact using the form here.

One of the reasons for the proposal of 3,500 houses in Culham is that South Oxfordshire District Council have been insisting that they need to build 22,500 homes in the next fifteen years and have based their figures on the SHMA (Strategic Housing Market Assessment).  Many people have believed the SHMA to be flawed, including John Howell, our MP.  He has been campaigning for a revised method of calculation of housing need.  Finally on 14 September the Government has announced a new standard method for calculating local authorities’ housing need, aiming to get the right homes built in the right places.

John Howell has written to us to say:
‘Over the last few days we have introduced a consultation on a new formula for determining house numbers.  The methodology follows what I helped set out in what was called the Local Plan Expert Group report.  This is a matter of enormous significance for South Oxfordshire and much more important than it may at first seem. Under the proposals, South Oxfordshire will be expected to provide 617 new dwellings per year instead of the 725-825 it currently has to provide. In other words, the proposed new methodology means a potential saving of between 108 and 208 dwellings per year. It also means that South Oxfordshire should once again have a 5 year land supply.  I think this calculation should help you in your campaign even though it is only out for consultation at the moment.

Just for information: I understand that someone at an SODC meeting said I supported the development at Culham. I do not.

John’

[John Howell OBE MP FSA, Member of Parliament for Henley]

As John says this should be good news for Culham except that because the new method is not yet passed into law but is open for public consultation until 9 November, the leader of SODC is still insisting that the plan to build 3500 in Culham should proceed.

We intend to fight him every step of the way, attending the current Scrutiny, Cabinet and Full Council meetings, and now have a large London law firm behind our campaign.

Full details of this Government consultation can be found here.  It is open for public responses until 9 November 2017

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/planning-for-the-right-homes-in-the-right-places-consultation-proposals

Take the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/planningforhomes