Local Plan: Letters

Local Plan must be community-devised

I am writing as a local minister who is interested in fostering good community relations and also as an ex-policy planner concerned to see good environmental outcomes.

I was very interested to receive notification of the Canterbury district preferred option local plan and I attended and spoke at the Council Overview Committee at the Guildhall on May 13.

In preparation, I read the draft local plan and all the supporting documents in my spare time. I confess I fell asleep during at least one of the very many technical reports! However, I was delighted to read early on: "As a council... we are ambitious and will do the best for our people".

Can I graciously suggest that in order to fulfil that promise, our elected representatives and our public servants might find it helpful to ask themselves if the draft Local Plan actually reflects the emphases in the new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) on the need for the Local Plan exercise to be creative, collective and realistic?

I believe the local plan, which will run to 2030, should certainly be a "creative" production, as the NPPF puts it: "finding ways to enhance and improve the places in which we live our lives". It's good to embrace the future with hope and to be imaginative.

Let's allow the Canterbury City Council policy planners to dream dreams! But at the same time they and their political masters must not frame policies and proposals in a fashion that is remote from the populace they serve. The local plan process should definitely be a "collective" one! In terms of the NPPF again:

"Early and meaningful engagement and collaboration with neighbourhoods, local organisations and business is essential. A wide section of the community should be proactively engaged, so that the local plan. as far as possible, reflects a collective vision and a set of agreed priorities for the sustainable development of the area..."

Also, the local plan must be "realistic" if it is to succeed in terms of maintaining healthy communities in our district, promoting growth and ensuring sustainability. In his foreword to the NPPF, Greg Clark, the Minister for Planning, says "Local plans should be aspirational but also realistic". They should address opportunities for development and the environmental implications of planning choices. They should reflect genuine needs and local concerns.

At this stage, I have some concerns and misgivings. I'm concerned about the over-reliance on the ancillary reports produced and testing of possible scenarios carried out by private consultants. The local plan needs to be community-devised and community-led. Not simply informing us about what has been prepared for our benefit, but involving us in the framing of policies and proposals that will directly affect us.

As I read the draft local plan, I confess that I fail to even hear consistently the convincing voice of the professional planners offering coherent advice to us and deduce that they themselves may be struggling to reconcile the myriad consultant reports that have been commissioned to underpin the plan.

I'm concerned about the disconnect between the evidence gathered and the proposals contained in the draft local plan. The Mori poll of residents says "Don't use greenfield sites" and a commissioned study says "Protect and conserve" in south Canterbury yet the draft local plan says, in effect, "OK to use this grade 1 agricultural land for development". Supporting studies highlight congestion and the urgent need to surmount gridlock in Canterbury yet the draft local plan proposes a 4,000 home development that will inevitably add to traffic flows in and around Canterbury city centre!

Can I finish by suggesting that my fellow residents get ready for the forthcoming consultation exercise by looking at the draft local plan on the CCC website? Please look at the plan in the round, thinking about the various and some unique pressures on our district, as well as noting carefully how it will impact your own neighbourhood. Do participate fully when the consultation process begins in mid-June, so that the finished local plan document that goes before the Planning Inspector will be truly be the Community's Preferred Option Local Plan!

The Reverend Paul Wilson, Whitstable Baptist Church, Middle Wall, Whitstable

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Vision of 2031 is a nightmarish one

Canterbury City Councils' draft (surely daft?) local plan is a ill-thought out long-term project to make the district's over-population and congestion problem many times worse ("Visions of 2031: are we on right track?", Times, May 9).

If the Canterbury area is already suffering from a gridlock and pollution crisis, I dread to imagine what an extra 15,600 homes will add to this nightmare. Now, on a clear, warm day one can stand on the hillside at the University of Kent, look down over Canterbury and view the plainly visible omnipresent smog cloud which envelops our city.

As our population increases incrementally this current carcinogenic chemical fog will likewise be growing in size and toxicity every year. By 2031 air pollution is likely to be so catastrophic that respiratory/cardiovascular illnesses will have reached epidemic proportions whilst residents and visitors will be forced to wear particle filtration masks (commonly worn by people working around asbestos) as a matter of routine.

Canterbury City Council executives are systematically destroying the district by constantly approving the uprooting of what remains of our vegetation, house-building we don't need and the opening of countless small business-killing chain stores.

My vision of 2031: Paradise lost

Clive Wilkins-Oppler, Canterbury

HB Times 23rd May 2013