The EU summit broke up today with no agreement on the union’s budget for the next seven years. Earlier in the day it was rumoured that the president of the European council, Herman Van Rompuy, was trying to pull a fast one. The budgetting process is somewhat complex. It was said Mr Van Rompuy would come up with a euro billions total that would confuse and satisfy both those who want a budget cut and those who want a budget hike.

Is Uttlesford District Council trying the same tactic over its local plan for future housing? For several years it was planning for over 4,000 additional homes on new sites to meet needs over a 15-year period. That total was in addition to those already in the planning pipeline and amounted to about 420 a year.

Then the council’s Herman Van Rompuy decided (without much apparent wisdom and evidence to back it) arbitrarily to drop the numbers to just over 3,000 in total; upwards of 300 homes each year for 15 years.

(Don’t worry that 15 times 300 doesn’t make 3,000. The extra houses will be on known sites already planned.)  

Recently published papers based on demographic forecasts show that the annual total should never have been dropped. Van Rompuy’s first mistake. 🙁

The annual total now is back over 400. But Van Rompuy’s creative arithmetic says that sites for only just over 3,000, not 4,000, homes are needed.

Puzzled? Well, I was until I spotted that this total is for 13 years only and not 15 years that I am sure government legislation in the national planning framework requires.

Europe’s Herman Van Rompuy’s plot failed; the EU summit collapsed with no decisions made.

Is Uttlesford’s Van Rompuy trying to cover up his earlier error in dropping the housing total he has been planning for? Is he trying to fool the development industry? Is he trying to avoid debating with the public his previous flawed commitment that if 4,000 homes are required, a new town is the answer? Will he be able to confuse a planning inspector next year?

Meanwhile, next Monday’s private meeting of the LDF working group to look at housing locations has been abandoned. It’s rescheduled for 14th December at 09:30; not in the evening as promised. Will it be in public? Will Uttlesford’s Van Rompuy even be there and willing to explain his creative housing calculations?

[With apologies to the President of the European Council.]